


Reflorescence

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fertility god Thor, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Magical Accidents, Pining, Porn With Plot, Pre-Thor (2011), Sex Pollen, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24024007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Thor interrupts one of Loki's rituals and accidentally links his fertility powers to his brother.(aka "angsty creeping ivy")
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 196
Kudos: 894





	1. The Ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Creeping Ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16409024) by [ravenbringslight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight). 



> This story has a unique situation. I first started writing it in 2018 for the thorki big bang, and it was the original (angsty) version of [Creeping Ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16409024). With the deadline for the bang looming, I knew I wasn't going to finish it and so I took the same premise and rewrote it with a lighter, more humorous tone, which became the version of Creeping Ivy that I published.
> 
> About a year later I published this angsty version as a WIP, but then felt like I was never going to finish it, and deleted it.
> 
> However, I've had multiple people ask me about it wondering where it went, so I've decided to publish it again. I've also recently gotten some inspiration to work on it, and I have some hope that I might actually finish it this time!
> 
> Since I initially had no plans to publish it at all, I used parts of the story in other stories - notably, some of the sex scenes made it into Creeping Ivy, and a scene with Frigga giving Thor and Loki a gift made it into Lullaby for a stormy night. I've decided to just leave them in here as well. 
> 
> "Choose not to use archive warnings" is due to the sex pollen compulsion, which makes anything dubcon or noncon by definition, but I felt like using the archive warning for it would be a little misleading. Regardless, please proceed at your own risk. If you saw the sex pollen tag and you're here anyway you're probably ok.
> 
> The new title is courtesy of Rai, who had the absolute perfect word to describe both this story and its weird publishing history. Thank you friend!
> 
> As always, visit me at <https://twitter.com/thunderingraven>

_**reflorescence**. Noun. (botany) A blossoming anew of a plant after it has apparently ceased blossoming for the season._

//

The morning of the worst day of Loki’s life dawned rosy and full of promise. He took a hearty breakfast out in the gardens with his mother. The tails of his coat picked up the dew on the grass and painted wet streaks on his boots as he made his way to the table, and he and Frigga sat nestled amidst the color and perfume of Frigga's early spring flowers—sweet alyssum and hyacinth and daffodil and tulip in every hue of the rainbow. Her plants were three times as large as they ought to be due to repeated proximity to Thor and his inherent fertility magic, and being in her garden always made Loki feel like he had shrunk, maybe turned into a sprite or a fairy. It was strangely cozy.

“Are you taking advantage of the stars today?” Loki asked, piling a scone high with sweetened clotted cream and blackberry preserves.

“You know I am, darling,” Frigga said. “An alignment like this doesn’t come along very often. I’d be a fool not to.”

Loki hummed his agreement and drizzled some honey over the tower of sweetness he’d already made, then put some extra into his tea for good measure. It never hurt to have sugar before expending a lot of magical energy. Frigga raised an eyebrow at the monstrosity Loki was building on his plate and then silently passed him the dish of bacon he was eyeing up.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you’re casting?” Loki asked, crumbling a piece of bacon.

“A witch never tells,” Frigga said.

Loki laughed. “You’re not a witch.”

“Aren’t I?” Frigga asked with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “And you?”

“Oh, you know,” Loki said blithely, “just a _tiny_ little something I’ve been cooking up.” He sprinkled the bacon on top of his scone with an unnecessary flourish and a cheeky grin, and Frigga laughed.

“I shudder to think what you have planned. Nothing untoward, I hope?”

“Mother,” Loki said in a tone of mock affront, “how could you even _think_ —”

Frigga’s smirk was a twin to Loki’s own. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t, darling.”

“Which leaves out almost precisely nothing.”

“‘Almost’ is such an important word.”

“Semantics,” Loki said cheerfully, and dug into his food with gusto.

*

Despite Loki’s flippancy, he had been planning tonight for at least half a decade. This particular arrangement of constellations didn’t happen all that often, and due to the simultaneous perfect syzygy of Asgard with Sol and Mani, tonight’s was going to be especially powerful. Any spells cast at the proper time would be stronger than usual, but with the right preparation—and Loki’s preparation was, indeed, quite thorough—he should be able to harness the celestial vibrations in a ritual to permanently increase his own powers. By this time tomorrow, he should be at least three times as powerful as he was now, if not more.

He was practically salivating at the thought.

It was a perfect day for it too. There were no functions to weasel out of, no social calls to ignore. His father was visiting Nornheim. His mother was going to be busy doing the same thing he was. And Thor was off on a hunting trip with his idiot friends. Loki would be entirely undisturbed. To top it all off, the weather was _gorgeous_. It was one of those achingly crisp spring days that hovered right on the edge between warm and cold, with the promise of summer hanging ripe in the air, and the sky was an absolutely fathomless cerulean—the same shade as Thor’s eyes, incidentally.

Loki spent the rest of the morning riding, enjoying the weather and the wind in his hair and the feel of the horse underneath him. He coaxed the beast into a gallop a few times, which was nearly as good as flying with Thor for the feeling of pure exhilaration involved—although of course nothing could truly compare to that—but it was definitely the closest that Loki could get on his own.

Maybe he’d be able to fly himself after his spell tonight.

Windblown and happy, Loki stabled his horse, then returned to his apartments to bathe and begin setting up.

Loki’s apartments were almost a mirror image of Thor’s. They had a large shared bath with a pool big enough to swim in, each of them with a bedroom connecting to it, followed by an informal salon and then a formal salon. Loki’s informal salon he used mostly as a personal library, and he’d had an extra room constructed off of it as a workroom. 

After Loki’s soak, he toweled himself dry and then chose a close-fitting sleeveless tunic and leggings and boots of soft doeskin, and tied his hair back with a leather thong.

His workroom was exactly as he had left it. 

The rest of Loki’s rooms were woodwork and gilt, but his workroom had an all-stone interior so that it couldn’t catch fire, with a drain in the floor and a large window. Loki had initially dithered about the window a bit. It was easier to cast wards without a window to worry about, but sometimes, considering the ingredients he worked with, ventilation was vital. A huge heavy scorch-marked table took up an entire wall, and another wall was devoted to shelves of equipment and neatly labeled ingredients.

Six bottles sat in a straight row on the table. Loki had spent the last five years collecting the ingredients and brewing them. Many of the ingredients had been extremely rare or expensive, and a few had been either illegal or dangerous to acquire, or both. The brewing processes themselves had been time-consuming and delicate, some of them requiring certain planetary phases, one of them taking the entire five years. Producing even one of these potions would have been an insanely high accomplishment, and Loki had managed all of them. It still gave him a pleasant smug thrill just to see them all lined up like this.

First, a long-necked bulb full of shimmering silver liquid, fine bubbles streaming up to fizzle at the surface. Among other things, this one had required a truly ludicrous amount of diamonds, and the mermaid’s tears that had also gone into it might actually have been worth more than the gems. It almost seemed a waste. Almost. 

Second, a rectangular vial of glowing purple ooze. This one had given Loki the most gray hairs, because it had taken three years to brew properly and it was impossible to know until the final uncorking if it had been successful or not; had it failed, there wouldn’t have been time to redo it, and this whole endeavor would have been moot. He’d had a backup going just in case, but he hadn’t been able to get the raw material for a second backup and he’d fretted endlessly the entire time.

Third, an opaque flask the size of two of Loki’s fingers together. There were just a few clear drops of liquid at the bottom of it, a quadruple distillation of the perfect blue of a cloudless autumn sky captured on an equinox, musical wind from the aeolian plains, the heat of a newborn Muspelheim volcano, the breath of a basilisk, the sadness of a mother, and the glint of moonlight off a phoenix’s egg.

Fourth, a jug of viscous amber liquid that sloshed around of its own volition, climbing the sides, rippling around in waves, folding in on itself and then spreading out again. Loki didn’t even like to think of what he’d done to make this one, and he begged a silent plea of forgiveness to the Fates every time he looked at it.

Fifth, the easiest but most time-consuming potion, the catalyst. The ingredients were simple, the brewing process equally so, but it had taken the full five years. Thankfully, Loki had made this one so many times over the centuries he could do it without much thought, and he’d had no doubt that it would turn out well.

And sixth, a bottle of really, _really_ good wine. Loki had won it in a game with an elf king by cheating fair and square. The wine wasn’t for the spell at all, but for Loki to drink in celebration when it was all over.

Humming to himself, Loki began bustling around getting out all the equipment he would need. He had six hours left, and he was going to need them.

*

It took Loki three hours to chalk all the rune diagrams onto the floor, walls, and ceiling, and the whole time he could _feel_ the vibrational energies of the alignment growing around him. A twinge of nervous excitement sparked in his belly.

Everything was going perfectly.

With one hour to go, Loki double-checked all his wards. He did _not_ want to be interrupted tonight. He had his apartments warded against physical intruders at all times anyway as a general rule, which he sometimes relaxed for Thor but no one else except on the rarest of occasions, and to his standard wards he’d added magical ones both to contain his own magic and to keep anyone else’s from interfering with his. They all seemed to be in order.

With a half hour to go, Loki paced his workroom, careful not to smudge any of the diagrams he’d drawn, worrying at his hands.

With fifteen minutes to go, he re-tied his hair, stretched all his limbs, cracked his neck. Bounced on his toes.

With five minutes to go, he was sure that time had never passed so slowly for anyone in all of history, ever.

With zero minutes to go, he was sitting in the center of the concentric circles he’d drawn in the middle of the floor, legs crossed, hands resting lightly on his knees, eyes closed, breathing slowed, heart quieted.

The constellations aligned. The heavens sang.

Loki began.

*

Exactly forty seven minutes and thirty two seconds later, Thor came in.

*

“Brother!” Thor said brightly, shoving the door open. “Look what I found on Alfheim! I know you’d been looking for one of these and I came back early to—surprise you—”

Loki whipped around, startled nearly out of his skin. The ritual had been going off _perfectly_ , this couldn’t be happening now, no, no, nonono—

It shouldn’t have been able to happen at all. Thor was supposed to be _gone_ , hunting with Sif and the others. They weren’t even supposed to be on Asgard, they’d gone off to Alfheim in search of more exotic prey, and they weren’t due back for a week at the least.

And even if Thor _was_ supposed to be back, Loki had his wards. They were supposed to repel anybody who tried to enter his chambers. Anybody! Including idiot brothers!

It came to Loki in a flash—including idiot brothers who sometimes (say, perhaps two weeks ago) went out drinking with their younger sibling and got them to drunkenly relax their wards so they could dump them into their own bed to pass out...and then said younger sibling in his hungover state the next day didn’t bother to redo them...and then said younger sibling just absolutely forgot about it because said younger sibling was far too wrapped up in his own internal masturbatory fantasy about what a magnificent spell he was about to pull off to care about anything having to do with his idiot brother…

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit—

Loki felt the power he was manipulating hiccup.

“GET OUT!” Loki screamed.

“What—”

With a wordless cry, Loki tried to shove Thor back out the door with a blast of seidr, but instead every inscribed rune in the room flared silver. Thor started crackling with electricity and he looked down at his own hands in confusion. The power that had been coursing through Loki, controlled and precise, suddenly grew wild and fierce. Hungry. Seeking.

Thor looked back up and his eyes were glowing silver.

“Loki?”

But Loki couldn’t respond. The magic was ripping through him, burning him up from the inside out. He doubled over on himself, gasping. Thor reached for him. The instant his hand touched Loki’s arm they both stiffened.

The spell was going wrong, horribly wrong. Loki’s brain was a garble of electric mush. He tried to just cut the whole thing off, end it, but his seidr didn’t respond. He couldn’t move his own body. Thor was stronger than he was though, maybe he could...

“Thor,” Loki gritted out through clenched teeth. He tried to point using his eyes. “Potion. On. Sun.”

There was still one potion left to go. Maybe if they could just complete the ritual it would end…

Thor seemed to understand. He ripped himself away from Loki’s arm. The jug of roiling amber potion was sitting right there two feet away from them. All Thor had to do was pour some of it onto the image of Sol that Loki had inscribed on the floor. Thor was moving in jagged jerks, like each motion required ripping himself out of shackles. A twisting arc of silver lightning connected them where they had touched, bridging the air between them. It looked almost liquid, and it writhed, drops of incandescence dripping off of it. It danced and sang. Loki was certain it was laughing. Thor’s hand closed around the neck of the jug.

“How—much—” Thor choked out.

It didn’t matter. Any amount would do. But Loki wanted to be sure it would be over. “All,” Loki managed.

With a roar, Thor hefted the jug from the ground with the amount of effort it usually took him to lift an entire boulder, and he upended the entire thing onto the glowing silver outline of Sol.

They both screamed.

The room exploded.

Loki’s eyes rolled up in his head and the world went black.


	2. The First Time

Loki swam back into consciousness like a free diver breaking through the surface of the ocean. He gasped when he came awake, and bolted upright, shaking, before falling back onto his elbows.

His workroom was an unmitigated disaster. Everything in it had been torn to flinders. The table was gone. The shelves were gone, and everything on them. The window was blown out. Bits of twisted metal and shattered glass lay everywhere. Loki’s clothes were singed and the end of his hair was smoking, which he scrambled to smother with his hands. All of the runes and other inscriptions he’d made were gone, and a fine layer of glowing black soot darkened the walls and ceiling.

The only other thing still left in one piece was Thor, who was lying face down where he’d fallen after pouring the potion.

“Thor,” Loki croaked. He tried to get his legs under him to crawl over. “Thor.”

If Thor was alive, Loki was going to kill him.

Thor groaned and shifted slightly.

“Thor.” Loki grabbed his shoulder and started shaking. “Wake up. You idiot. _Wake up_.”

Loki realized that morning sunlight was coming in through the broken window. How long had they been out? Was this just the next morning, or had it been longer?

“‘M’awake,” Thor muttered, batting at Loki’s hand. “Get off me.”

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done,” Loki hissed at him. “Do you even realize—ugh, get _up_!”

Thor finally rolled over and dragged his hand over his face.

“What happened?”

“ _You_ happened,” Loki said bitterly. “Look at this. Look around you. My lab is destroyed! My spell is ruined! This was years of effort. Years! Gone up in smoke!”

Thor coughed and sat up, brushing glass out of his hair, and looked around the room.

“Shit,” Thor said. 

Loki was starting to shake with a combination of rage and nerves and crushing disappointment. “You are going to help me clean up this mess, you are going to help me figure out what, exactly, _specifically_ , went wrong, and then you are going to owe me favors for the rest of your miserable life, _do you understand me_?”

Loki hauled himself to his feet and staggered over to the window to get a breath of fresh air.

“Was this that thing?” Thor asked, heaving himself up as well. “The thing you’ve been so squirrely about?”

“ _Squirrel_ —UGH. Yes. This was _that thing_ ,” Loki hissed. “Are you even even going to apologize for fucking everything up so spectacularly?”

“All I did was walk in the room,” Thor said. “Why didn’t you lock the door if it was so important?”

Loki made a sound of wordless rage and clawed at the air for a moment.

“You’re the only one who could even come in here and you were supposed to be GONE!” Loki yelled. “Do you have any idea how many centuries it took me to accumulate everything that was in this room? Do you have any idea how much work went into the ritual I was casting?!”

“Well maybe if you hadn’t been being so _squirrelly_ about it I might have an idea—”

Loki shoved him in the chest and Thor caught his wrists and they glared at each other. Thor’s nostrils flared and he dropped Loki’s hands and turned away.

“I didn’t mean to destroy your workroom,” Thor said.

Loki huffed and crossed his arms and pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to pull himself together.

“We’d taken down a fire wyrm,” Thor said, “and I managed to get its heartstone. I thought you’d be pleased to have one.”

Loki exhaled shakily. “Any other time I would have been,” he admitted. He _had_ been lusting after the heartstone of a fire wyrm for quite some time. He didn’t even know Thor had been paying attention like that. Trust his sweet fool of a brother to turn a thoughtful gift into a disaster like this.

“I suppose it’s destroyed too,” Thor said.

“Most likely.”

Thor touched Loki’s wrist and Loki looked up at him. Thor wasn’t glaring anymore and his brow was contrite. “I didn’t mean to ruin your spell either.”

“I suppose that’s as close to sorry as I’m getting.”

“What else do you want me to say?”

Loki scowled and sighed. He wasn’t nearly ready to forgive Thor just yet. 

“Move out of the way,” Loki said. “Let me get rid of all this debris.”

Loki reached out and made a sweeping motion with his hand, extending his seidr at the same time. What he meant to do was scoop all the debris into the center of the room so he could dispose of it.

What actually happened was that every splinter, glass shard, and hunk of metal went flying wildly through the air like a giant had sneezed.

Loki and Thor both had to duck and cover their faces as they were pelted all over again.

“What the hell was that!” Thor demanded angrily.

“I don’t know!” Loki yelled back. “My seidr’s all fucked up!”

He’d reached out with his seidr like he’d done thousands of times before, but where he had called for a trickle it had poured out of him like a waterfall.

Had the ritual worked after all?

Cautiously, Loki tried another spell. It was a simple one, the first trick that he had learned as a child; summoning a tiny dancing green flame in his hand. He held his hand out palm up and willed the flame into being.

His whole arm was engulfed in leaping green fire before he could blink.

Loki flailed, screaming, and killed his seidr. His arm was charred completely black.

“GOOD GODS!” Thor cried, reaching for him. “Don’t move, I’ll carry you—”

Loki nearly vomited at the sight of his arm, but he had an inkling... “Wait!” he gasped.

Normally, Loki’s healing powers were a bit on the underwhelming side. He could heal small cuts and bruises, but that was about as far as they extended. He had a feeling though... Trembling, Loki passed his left hand over his smoking right arm and called on his seidr. Healing golden light poured out of his hand and cocooned his ruined arm, flooding him with liquid warmth. Loki let out a long relieved sigh as the pain ebbed away. When the light dissipated, his flesh was whole and pink. 

He never would have been able to heal himself like that before.

“Wow,” Loki sighed.

Despite Thor’s interference, the ritual _had_ worked. Loki felt like singing.

“Wow,” Thor agreed. His cheeks looked flushed, his eyes slightly glassy. “What kind of spell did I interrupt?”

A bit of giddiness started to creep into Loki’s chest, and he almost laughed. “You may not have fucked everything up after all,” Loki said, starting to grin.

*

His anger and irritation evaporating and his mood improving by the minute, Loki started explaining things to Thor. About the alignment, his plans, his preparations. Despite the destruction of his workroom, it was a relief to have the thing successfully behind him and to finally be open about what he’d been up to, and Loki found himself chattier than usual. Oh, he couldn’t wait to go test his new powers. Find out exactly what he was capable of now. 

Thor was never overly talkative at the best of times, but his responses grew increasingly terse as Loki babbled on. Loki was just starting to get irritated about it when Thor stumbled over to the wall and nearly fell.

“I think I need...to go sit down,” Thor said. He was looking even more flushed now, and decidedly sweaty. 

He lurched out into the library and flopped onto the couch, Loki trailing behind him.

“Are you alright?” Loki asked.

“Just...give me a minute…”

Loki frowned. He had been so focused on himself that he hadn’t bothered to stop and think if the spell might have done anything to Thor. It shouldn’t have, but...

“I’ll get you some water,” Loki said.

He had a small table under the window where he kept a carafe of wine and a pitcher of water. He also kept a large potted devil’s ivy plant on the windowsill to soften the sharp lines of the room a bit, and it caught his eye as he poured his brother a drink. Loki frowned again. He was positive that the ivy had been half that size yesterday.

“What’s that noise?” Thor asked as Loki handed him the cup.

Loki glanced back over to the window. There were two doves on the outside sill now, and they were…

Oh.

“Looks like someone found a mate,” Loki said. 

And then Loki’s mouth fell open, because his ivy suddenly grew three inches while he was looking at it.

Thor groaned and his cup clattered to the floor. Loki looked back down at him. His golden brother sagged down on the couch, brow damp with sweat, his face flushed all the way to his neck. He shifted restlessly. Another groan left his throat, followed by something that sounded suspiciously like a whimper.

Loki went to feel Thor’s forehead for fever but he froze and his eyes widened.

Shit.

“Thor,” Loki said, very carefully. “Why do you have an erection?”

Erection was maybe an understatement.

“I need…” Thor managed. He shifted again, and his arm brushed against his cock and he moaned alarmingly.

“Ymir’s bloody fucking _balls_ ,” Loki swore. “Up, up! Not in my room you don’t! Get up right this instant!”

Loki’s mind was racing. What, exactly, had happened during that damned ritual? What had that weird lightning bridge between them been? Had Thor’s powers become augmented as well? Loki’s power was simple sorcery, but Thor...

Thor was a fertility god.

Loki nearly screamed.

“Up,” Loki demanded again. He wrestled Thor up off the couch, then got his shoulder under Thor’s armpit and dragged him through their shared bath and into Thor’s own bedchamber and dropped him on the bed.

Thor flopped over and started rubbing his hips against the bedding. Loki did scream this time.

“Can’t you even wait until I’m out of the room to rub one out! Norns! Let me just—ughhh—”

Grimacing, Loki turned his witchsight on Thor to see what was going on. Loki knew what his brother’s magic usually looked like. He had seen it more times than he could count—the thrumming silver twist of lightning in his veins, the gentle golden wisps of fertility and growth that clung to him like creeping vines.

There were no gentle wisps now, but heavy choking ropes as thick as Loki’s wrists, and the aura coming off of Thor lit up the entire room and possibly beyond.

Fuck.

Well that explained Loki’s ivy, and the birds fucking on his windowsill, and Thor’s sudden uncontrollable urge to...er… _expend_ himself.

Apparently Loki needed to get to the bottom of what, exactly, had happened, but first things first.

“Take care of _that_ ,” Loki said, flapping his hands in Thor’s general direction. “I’ll be in the bath when you’re done.”

*

Their bathing chamber was large. There were two separate rooms with doors for private toileting. The main chamber held a heated pool set into the floor that was large enough for ten people (or fifteen if you all liked each other, which Thor and Loki had gleefully discovered as adolescents with more hormones than sense), and spigots on the walls set above head height for showering. One section of wall was made up entirely of alcoves full of soaps and oils and other assorted things. It didn’t take Loki long to scrub off the remnants of the workroom explosion, and he was just wringing his hair out when Thor pushed the door open.

He looked wretched. Feverish. His hair was disheveled, his eyes still glassy. He had on a half-open dressing gown tied sloppily at the waist, and he was...Norns, he was still hard as a rock.

“I thought you were supposed to be taking care of...that,” Loki said.

“I tried,” Thor said miserably. “Twice.”

“Obviously you didn’t try hard enough.”

“Hah hah.”

Thor dropped his dressing gown on the floor and slid into the pool. He sat on the ledge running around the edge and tipped his head back until it rested on the floor behind him.

“What have you done to me?” Thor groaned. “I want to fuck the entire palace into the ground.”

“It’s your fertility powers,” Loki said plainly. “They got amplified the same way that my own magic did. At least, I think that’s what happened.”

“Take them back, I don’t want them.”

“Feel free to go back in time and _not_ enter my workroom at the height of a ridiculously complicated spell.”

Thor cracked one eyelid to give Loki the stink eye, which Loki gave right back.

“You probably just need to fuck someone,” Loki said. “I’m sure you could find someone willing to give you a tumble, despite your homely appearance.” Which was a jest of course, because Thor was absurdly handsome and highly sought as a bed partner far and wide, and he’d likely have a score of people climbing him like a tree before the words were even out of his mouth. For some reason it always made Loki feel a bit sour.

“I can hardly move,” Thor complained. “Brother, fetch someone for me.”

Loki scoffed and slapped water at him.

“Are you out of your mind? Find someone yourself. Preferably a man, unless of course you _want_ a lot of tiny little Thors running around.”

Thor dragged his hands down his face.

“Could you at least call Fandral for me?” he begged.

“Why, are you going to fuck _him?_ ”

“ _Loki._ ”

“Fine,” Loki said. “But I don’t know why I’m doing anything for you at all.”

*

Loki called for Fandral, and Fandral took one look at Thor and his eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling. He ended up going to fetch one of the stableboys who’d been making eyes at Thor for months.

Loki could hear their antics all the way from his library, and he hunched down behind a book, his cheeks red. Was that the stableboy’s voice or Thor’s? Was that the bed hitting the wall? What were those crashing noises? Loki’s brain kept supplying supremely unhelpful mental images of what was going on. Sweaty naked bodies writhing in passion, faces twisted in ecstasy. A particularly loud cry made it through the walls again, and it was _definitely_ Thor’s and something about the tone of it made Loki’s stomach feel strange for some reason. Some of his anger from earlier started coming back.

He was _trying_ to research and figure out what the lightning bridge that had connected them was. He’d never really heard or read of anything like it before, and obviously it had had consequences, and Loki absolutely hated not knowing things. But it was _exceedingly hard to concentrate_ while also having to listen to his brother fucking someone three rooms over.

And what he really wanted to be doing was testing out his own new powers, not babysitting Thor (and just forget about his workroom, he didn’t even want to think about that at all for at least another day or two).

Fandral had stuck around in case Thor needed anything else. Loki had reluctantly relaxed his wards for him and he and was now sitting in one of Loki’s armchairs. He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs awkwardly and staring at the devil’s ivy on the windowsill.

“Yes, it’s quadrupled in size since we sat down,” Loki snapped. “Stop gaping like a fish.” _And stop adjusting your cock_ , he wanted to say, but kept his mouth shut. Apparently Thor’s aura was having an effect on Fandral too.

Twenty minutes later, Fandral was leading a dazed and bowlegged stableboy away by the shoulder, and Loki was re-doing his wards and then bullying his way into Thor’s bedroom.

“I’m not sure, but I think—” Loki began, then stopped talking and reached out to the wall for support. His mouth fell open in amazement.

Thor’s bedroom didn’t look like a bedroom at all, but a leafy green cave. Ivy and honeysuckle from the outside had grown in through the window, breaking it, and climbed down to the floor and up across the ceiling. Flowers were opening all along it even as Loki watched.

“Was this from…?”

“From fucking?” Thor asked from where he was sprawled on the bed. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“Did it work?” Loki asked.

Thor laughed, a little hysterically. “No.”

Loki finally looked over at him properly. Thor’s face was haggard, his chest heaving, the covers thrown haphazardly across him and tented where his hard cock still jutted up.

This was just fantastic. Loki’s stomach tangled nervously. He’d run across something while trying to research…

“I think our magic might be connected now,” Loki said. “The lightning bridge. You remember it?”

Thor groaned and rolled over on his side.

“I think you need to leave,” Thor rasped.

“Oh be quiet,” Loki said. “Obviously you need my help—”

“You need to _leave_.”

Thor rolled off the bed and onto his feet and stood there swaying for a moment. He was a sight. Naked and gleaming with sweat, his hard cock angry and red, his lank hair falling to hide half his face. He took an abortive step towards Loki, then made a fist and hit himself in the leg instead.

Loki took a step back.

Thor took a step forward.

The nervous tangle in Loki’s belly intensified. If what he was fearing was true, he should probably be running.

Instead, he opened his witchsight and looked at Thor. His world shifted sideways.

“Sweet Adumla,” Loki breathed. “How are you even upright?”

Thor’s aura had been huge before, but now he was positively incandescent. Too bright to look at directly. A miniature sun, his own magic burning him up from the inside out. Loki was fairly certain that a lesser man would be dead by now. There was no way Thor could sustain this; he needed an outlet and he needed it immediately.

“Leave now,” Thor growled, and in two long steps he was upon Loki, his hands closing on Loki’s shoulders. The instant they touched a violent frisson shivered through both of them and they both gasped. Loki felt something within him flare to life. It was an electric spark deep in the core of him, and it danced, and sang, and laughed—the same laughter that had come from that lightning bridge—no, not a lightning bridge, call it what it was, a _link_ —and Loki _knew_. In his bones he knew, like it had been written there all along.

Before he could move an inch, Thor pulled Loki fast to him and buried his face in Loki’s neck and inhaled deeply.

“Oh gods,” Loki whispered brokenly. “It has to be me.”

A sharp rapping on the door snapped Loki out of his momentary paralysis, and he shoved Thor off of him as hard as he could. Thor fell back and staggered away.

“Thor?” Fandral called through the door. “Did you need me for anything else?”

There couldn’t have been a worse time for an interruption, nor, Loki supposed, a better one. Loki ran a shaky hand through his hair.

Thor lurched over to the door and cracked it open and spoke in low tones with Fandral for a moment, and sent him away. Loki’s mind churned frantically.

This entire thing was all Thor’s stupid, rotten fault. If he hadn’t barged in, if he hadn’t interrupted the spell, if he hadn’t touched Loki, if he’d just _stayed the fuck in Alfheim like he was supposed to_...

Loki swallowed past the hard lump in his throat.

Thor slumped against the door after he closed it behind Fandral.

“No,” Thor said.

“Look at you,” Loki said. “You’re dying. We have no choice.”

“It can’t be you,” Thor said. He started to reach his hands towards Loki, but then dug his fingers into his leg and fisted his hair instead.

“You want to fuck me,” Loki said.

“I want to fuck _everything_ ,” Thor growled, banging his head against the door. “I won’t let it be you.”

“Arrogant and rude, as ever.”

“What are you talking about?”

Loki crossed his arms. Steadied his insides. “Arrogant to think that you are stronger than the laws of magic. Rude to leave me out of the decision.”

“Loki, we _cannot_ —”

“And why not? Frankly, I’m insulted,” Loki said. “I’ve been told I’m quite a good fuck, actually—”

“This is not a joking matter!” Thor demanded angrily, trying to straighten, and then slumping back again with a soft grunt.

“No, it’s not,” Loki said, dropping his arms, his voice lowering. “But there’s no time for anything else and you’ll die if we don’t do this, so you had best come to terms with it now.” _Like I just did two minutes ago._

They stared at each other for a steel-eyed minute, until Thor’s face softened and something in him seemed to break. 

“Is there no other way?” Thor asked quietly.

“You felt it too,” Loki said, his voice just as soft. “Didn’t you? When we touched?”

“Gods help me. I did. I did.”

“Our magic is linked, at least for now. And it’s just sex,” Loki said, to convince himself as much as Thor. “It’s just bodies. This is just something that bodies do, and we’ll do it, and then you’ll be set to rights. And we’ll figure out how to get ourselves out of this mess altogether. Yes?”

Thor said nothing, which was answer enough.

Loki bit the insides of his cheeks. He and Thor had always been close. Always. They’d slept in the same bed as children, never shied from physical affection, bathed together, played together, fought together. Been each other’s confidantes and best friends and bitterest rivals. Seen each other through the heights of joy and sorrow both.

This would be fine. It would be just another blip in the long and storied history of Loki and Thor. Hah hah brother, remember that one time two thousand years ago when our magic went haywire and we had to fuck.

There was perhaps a body length between them but it felt as impassable as a canyon. How could either of them move, knowing to what end it would bring them?

Loki breached the distance first. Thor had wrapped his arms around his own middle and his face was downturned, hidden by his hair. He looked as liable to move as a statue. Loki reached a hesitant hand towards him, and took the smallest of steps. Thor flinched at the sound of Loki’s boot on the floor.

“You can still leave,” Thor rasped. “If you don’t touch me you can still leave. If you do…”

“I know,” Loki whispered.

Somehow, he took the next step. And the next. This close, Loki could feel raw, wild magic licking off of Thor. He looked at Thor with his witchsight again. Just to be sure. Just to really know that he was doing the right thing.

Even though he knew what he’d see, he nearly cried out. Thor was being pulled apart in front of him.

“I know,” Loki whispered again, or maybe he didn’t. There were tears in his eyes. He touched the back of Thor’s hand.

A wracking shudder passed through them both, just like the last time. The link inside of Loki flared.

Before Loki knew what was happening, Thor had pulled him into a crushing embrace.

“Oh gods, brother, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Thor groaned into his neck, over and over, his arms tightening around Loki’s waist. “For everything—”

“Be quiet,” Loki gasped. He was shocked despite himself at the raw physicality of Thor holding him like this, of his hard cock pressing against Loki’s hip, of his lust-roughened voice in Loki’s ear. Loki had never even dreamed of anything like this before, and now it was _happening_ , and even though he had walked into it knowingly it was still _extremely alarming_ —

Thor’s hips thrust against Loki’s once and Loki bit back a gasp. Thor whimpered.

“Maybe just try...like this first…” Loki managed.

Thor nodded against his neck. His fingers dug into Loki’s back. Loki stroked Thor’s hair, rhythmically, almost compulsively, the repetitive motion a point of solid contact in a world spinning dangerously off its axis.

They fell back against the wall, Loki with his back pressed into the ivy and Thor rutting into the crease where Loki’s thigh met his groin. Loki felt lightheaded and heavy at the same time. Maybe this would work, maybe Thor could just spend on him rather than...in him…

A tear leaked out of the corner of Loki’s eye as Thor rocked against him.

Thor’s lips were moving against Loki’s neck, mouthing something. For a brief second Loki thought that Thor might be trying to kiss him, but it resolved into an almost-silent whisper of “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“It’s ok,” Loki exhaled, still stroking Thor’s hair, “it’s ok.”

Wet warmth bloomed between them as Thor stiffened, then sagged into Loki’s shoulder.

“It’s ok,” Loki said.

He had no idea if anything was ok at all.

They moved awkwardly to the bed, still clutching at each other. Thor collapsed on his back with his hands over his face and Loki sat tensely on the edge. Thor’s belly was a mess, and Loki’s tunic as well. The spot in the ivy where Loki had been pushed up against the wall had grown twice as thick as the rest of it and there were tiny white flowers in the outline of his body.

Loki methodically smoothed every wrinkle in the bedcovers within his reach and tried not to shake.

“Well?” he said.

He wasn’t exactly hopeful that this would be the end of it. His mind was definitely not the clearest right now, but he was fairly certain that had it worked that he would have felt something from their link.

“Maybe the smallest bit,” Thor said from behind his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t think—”

Loki examined Thor with his witchsight while he was talking. He wanted to retch. Thor was still as bright as the heart of a star, and tiny pieces of him were flecking off and winking away into the aether. Loki had never seen anything like it. Was Thor losing pieces of himself forever? Was he simply coming apart at the aetherial level? Would he even be able to come back from this at all? 

Thor sighed out the longest, roughest, most despairing noise that Loki had ever had the misfortune to hear exit his lungs.

“ _Stop_ ,” Loki hissed, smacking the bed, suddenly furious at the entire situation, and Thor dropped his hands to stare at him in startlement. “You can stop acting like fucking me is the most disgusting thing you can think of. I’m trying to help you here, but I don’t have to. You can feel free to just die on your own in this bed for all I care. It shouldn’t take very long.”

“Loki, that’s not—”

“I’m going to get oil,” Loki said harshly, rising from the bed, “Don’t make me regret this even more than I already do.”

Loki stalked to their bathing chamber, slamming the door behind him, and grabbed the first oil that he found. Violently, he kicked off his boots, and then loosened the neck of his tunic so he could get his breath. What the hell was he doing? He paused for a moment to count to ten, then pulled himself together. Thor’s moments were running out.

Loki was doing the right thing, wasn’t he?

A noise from the other room had Loki running back. Thor was on his side on the bed, curled up, his hair soaked in sweat, his breathing labored. Horrifyingly, he was beginning to glow physically to the naked eye, his veins lighting up beneath his skin.

“Ymir’s bones,” Loki breathed, trying very hard not to panic. He uncapped the oil. Vanilla, almond, and cardamom. “Come on, come on,” he muttered, shaking Thor, turning him on his back. Absurdly, despite the gravity of the situation, Thor’s cock was still jutting straight up. “Ymir’s blood,” Loki moaned while shoving all the covers out of the way, and “Ymir’s teeth,” pulling his breeches down, and “Ymir’s bloody fucking arsehole” while he poured the oil all over both of them with hands shaking so badly that he spilled half of it on the bed.

And then, when Loki straddled his brother’s hips and lowered himself down onto his brother’s cock, there were no words at all.

Loki came to a trembling stop. Burning. Aching. Not breathing.

He tried to shift his hips. Thor was motionless underneath him.

No.

There was no way in the Nine that Thor was going to die with his cock inside Loki. Loki _would not allow it_.

“Wake up,” Loki said, shaking Thor’s shoulders. “Wake UP.” He shifted his hips again. He slapped Thor across the face. “ _Wake up_ ,” he sobbed. He pounded on Thor’s chest. “You can’t die, you’re not allowed to die, if you die I’m going to come find you in Valhalla and kill you again myself, WAKE UP!” The last words were screamed, Loki’s fists slamming down on Thor’s chest again, and then he fell forward over his brother’s supine form, weeping.

Suddenly, Thor stiffened and gasped, and his arms came around Loki like a vise.

Relief bloomed through Loki’s chest, but it instantly gave way to shock as Thor snapped his hips up, hard, and drove Loki’s breath out of him with a grunt. Oh. Oh. This was happening now. This was—

With a growl, Thor rolled them over. 

Thor wasn’t slow, or gentle. Loki couldn’t stop weeping. He could do nothing more than hang on for dear life as Thor slammed into him over and over again, each thrust a seemingly eternal drag and burn. Thor’s veins were still glowing under his skin, his entire undulating body mapped out in eerie golden script, his eyes two tiny suns.

They shone down on Loki’s face as Thor came inside of him with a cry. Their link flared. Energy poured out of Thor and into Loki, coursing through his veins, lighting him up too, and he was filled to bursting with sunlight and abundance; with tender green shoots pushing out of the fertile earth, and the unfurling buds of spring; with ripe golden wheat and apples heavy on the branch; with the burgeoning warmth of desire and the ecstasy of its fulfillment; with the fluttering of a thousand wings lifted in the joy of flight—all of them the many voices of _life_ , raised in a radiant song of thanks for itself.

Loki cried out as well, joining the chorus, his voice a perfect echo of Thor’s, and then the wave of Thor’s magic rolled through him and _out_ and left them both open-mouthed and breathless.

They held onto each other with trembling limbs until the glow faded. Until they were once again simply Thor and Loki.

Loki could feel that Thor was still hard where he was buried inside of him.

“Was that all of it?” Loki whispered, his voice ragged.

“I don’t— _ahh_ —I don’t think so.” Thor shifted an inch and Loki whimpered.

“Again, then.”

“Are you sure—”

“Again.”

Loki hadn’t come all this way just to stop now.

They stayed pressed cheek to cheek, not daring to look at each other as Thor rutted into Loki again. And again. Loki’s tears dried and he emptied his mind and wrapped his legs around Thor’s waist and simply let Thor ride him through it.

Thor spilled four more times, each sending a progressively smaller wave of magic flowing through Loki; the incredible high of it left him beautifully empty and aching afterwards each time. At last Thor finally came to a shuddering stop, and the final bit of excess magic left him softly, sighing through Loki’s heart like the caress of a summer breeze, and Loki sighed with it.

They lay still for a moment. Loki realized he had a death grip on the back of Thor’s hair and he slowly unclenched his fingers.

“You can move now,” Loki half whispered.

Thor rolled off him and dropped his legs off the side of the bed and put his head in his hands. Loki could only guess what he was thinking. None of what he could imagine was particularly good.

Loki folded his hands over his stomach. He was sore, and dripping, and confused, but somehow not feeling nearly as traumatized as he should be considering what had just happened. An after effect of the high, maybe. Or shock. Maybe he’d fall to absolute pieces later. Right now though, he simply laid on his back and looked up at the ceiling.

“Thor,” Loki said, reaching over to touch Thor’s back. “Look up.”

The four posters of Thor’s bed had become living cherry trees. They’d thickened and grown bark and roots that pushed between the flagstones of the floor, and branches that tangled together on the ceiling over the bed. Each branch was frosted in thousands of blossoms, and the entire canopy danced with butterflies and honeybees. It was beautiful.

Loki was transfixed by what was going on overhead and so he flinched when Thor reached out and touched his hair unexpectedly. Thor pulled away as if burned.

“Sorry,” they both said awkwardly at the same time, then Thor said, shamefaced, “it’s just—” He gestured at Loki’s head.

Loki felt for his hair himself and to his surprise found that it was curling well past his shoulders. It must have grown half a foot at the least.

“Oh,” Loki said.

“I’ll, ah...I’ll get you a rag,” Thor said. Loki suddenly realized what he must look like, used and covered in come, and he snatched the covers over his lower half, his cheeks burning. Thor fairly scurried into the bath.

Loki looked at him with his witchsight while he went. Everything seemed back to normal, or normal-ish at least. The lightning was all in place like usual. The fertility magic was stronger than it used to be, but definitely not at catastrophic levels anymore. It just appeared as thick golden vines now, wreathing Thor in their cheery glow.

Their sordid solution had worked, then.

“You take the bath first,” Thor said, emerging and throwing the rag at Loki.

They’d never shied away from bathing together before. It was going to be absolutely insufferable if that was how Thor was going to be from now on.

“Don’t turn into an idiot,” Loki said.

“What?”

“Don’t turn into even more of an idiot than you already are,” Loki amended. “You do not get to fuck me and then start avoiding me. We’re in this together now.”

“Gods, do you have to say it?” Thor groaned.

“It happened whether I say it or not.”

Thor sighed and sat down on the foot of the bed. He reached out to touch one of the tree-posters, then looked up at the flowered branches.

“I can’t believe we did _this_ ,” Thor said.

“You did it, not me.”

“Because of you. Therefore, we.”

“Semantics,” Loki said softly to himself.

“Is it over now?”

“I hope so,” Loki said. “I think so. Your magic looks fine now.”

Thor looked back at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

“We can’t let mother know,” Thor said. “About any of this.”

“ _Gods_ , no,” Loki said devoutly. “She’d kill us herself. Or worse. Me for not setting my wards properly if nothing else.”

Thor stared back up at the canopy, looking a bit lost. Loki lapsed into silence for a few moments, lost himself in the dance of the butterflies above them, his mind determinedly blank, then he wrapped the covers around himself and shambled to the bath. Thor paused, and then followed him. They kept their backs to each other and washed up in silence. Thor kept opening his mouth to speak, then closing it.

“...Thank you,” Thor said finally. “You didn’t—”

“Don’t,” Loki said. “Please.”

Thor made to go back to his room when he was done but stopped when Loki called out to him.

“I told you not to be an idiot,” he said. “You can’t sleep in there. Sleep on my couch and we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

Thor had that unreadable expression again. Loki didn’t know what to make of it, and he didn’t know if he liked it or not. It made him feel a little funny in the chest. He didn’t want to let Thor out of his sight though. It felt vitally important for some reason he couldn’t explain.

“I still can’t quite believe you’re not trying to kill me right now,” Thor said. “Or turn me into a frog again.”

“I’m as surprised as anyone,” Loki said. “Don’t think you’re getting off easy though. You still have my entire workroom to clean and replace.”

Thor smiled at him for some reason, wide and sunny, and Loki’s stomach did a flip.

“Sleep now,” Loki said.

Thor took the couch in Loki’s bedroom and Loki climbed into his bed. He doused the lights and closed his eyes and thought about the disastrous culmination of the last half decade of his life, and sobbing over his brother’s unconscious chest with his brother’s cock in his ass, and he cast a bubble of silence around himself and cried himself to sleep.


	3. Mitigation

Loki was pulled out of sleep forcibly. It felt like someone had stuck a hook in his chest and yanked.

Thor was awake. He was sitting on the couch hunched over his knees and breathing heavily.

“What is it?” Loki asked.

Thor straightened, his frightened eyes meeting Loki’s.

He was hard again.

Oh.

Loki supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that this wasn’t over. 

“I already tried to do it myself—” Thor started.

Loki didn’t know whether to be touched that Thor had tried to spare him by not immediately jumping to the obvious solution, or annoyed that Thor was putting his life in danger again by delaying the inevitable.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to be an idiot?” Loki said. “We already know the only thing that works.”

Thor put his head back between his knees and huffed out a sniffly little laugh.

“I cannot possibly ask you to do this for me again, brother—”

Loki rose from the bed and came to kneel on the floor in front of Thor. He took Thor’s hands in his, and Thor looked up to meet his gaze. He looked miserable.

“It’s ok,” Loki heard himself saying. “We’re in this together now, remember?”

Thor nodded and squeezed his hands.

Divorced from the life-or-death urgency of yesterday, they were both bundles of awkward nerves. Thor fetched the oil while Loki waited on the bed playing nervously with the ends of his newly-long hair. Neither of them knew whether to disrobe or to stay half covered in some semblance of modesty; their hands kept knocking into each other as they made jerky hesitant motions to tug their clothing aside or off, and Loki felt his cheeks going red and his breath growing thick in his lungs as more inches of his body fell bare to his brother’s eyes.

“Should I…” Thor started, then blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Should you what?”

“Use my fingers first? I don’t want to hurt you…”

“Ohh,” Loki said shakily. There hadn’t been time to bother with that yesterday, and he was still tender from it. His brain temporarily short circuited thinking of Thor’s fingers opening him up tenderly like a lover. “I, umm—” 

“Or you could do it,” Thor said quickly, “if you want to...that is…”

“No!” Loki interjected, maybe too forcefully, because Thor recoiled a bit. “I meant, no...it’s. Yes. I would...appreciate that.”

Loki laid back on the pillows and closed his eyes. Thor was gentle. So gentle. His brother’s hands had always seemed made for war, his rough calloused grip more suited to a hammer’s shaft than a lover’s caress, and Loki hadn’t known that his brother’s hands were capable of such tenderness. They worked on him now and, despite his nerves, Loki felt his body start to open up under their ministrations.

Loki swallowed a little gasp when Thor’s finger brushed against his prostate. His eyes shot open and he grabbed at Thor’s arm to still him.

“Ok,” Loki said. “That’s enough. You can—”

Thor was perched over Loki’s body, leaning on one arm, looking down on him. He let his weight come down on Loki as he brought his hand to Loki’s cheek.

“Are you sure…”

Thor’s eyes were so intense. It made Loki’s chest feel strange. Without meaning to, Loki brought his own hand up to cover Thor’s, and he gave it a squeeze. 

“It’s just sex,” Loki whispered, to comfort both of them. Just a bodily function, just things that bodies do. Hormones. That’s all. “Nothing to it.”

He didn’t want to stare into Thor’s (concerned, nervous, beautiful) eyes any longer because he was afraid of what they were doing to him. It was probably just the spell. Gently, he pushed Thor off of him and turned over onto his stomach.

“Like this,” Loki said.

He closed his eyes again. Felt Thor’s hands on his hips, sliding down to his ass. Parting his cheeks. He sucked in a breath. A trickle of oil, a pressure at his entrance, and then—

“ _Ohh_ ,” Loki groaned in spite of himself. Thor was _big_.

Thor froze.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No. No. Keep going.”

When he was in all the way, Thor stopped.

“Loki—”

“If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to stab you,” Loki said, with no heat in his voice. “I’m fine.”

Thor began moving. Gods, there was so much of him. An eternity to pull out and an equally long eternity to slide back in. Thor was being gentle in this as well, though. Slow, even, careful. So unlike the frenzied rutting of yesterday. 

The concern was touching, but—

“I won’t break,” Loki said. “I promise.”

“Maybe I will,” Thor murmured a little sadly, which made no sense to Loki at all, but then Thor shifted and hiked Loki’s hips up and started moving faster and Loki bit his lip and tried not to groan, and he forgot all about Thor’s strange words. Thor was haphazardly brushing against that sweet spot inside of him, and despite the awkwardness of the situation and the embarrassment and everything else, it felt...good…

Of course it did. Bodies. Sex. Right.

Thor’s hands were wrapped around Loki’s waist now and his thumbs dug into Loki’s back, and it almost hurt, almost. Thor was _big_ and Loki was still sore from yesterday and Thor’s hands were gripping him just a little too hard, and Loki’s chest felt tight, and his heart felt too big for his ribcage. He swallowed his grunts. This would be over soon, and then—

He cried out as Thor drove into him one last time and that golden life-giving magic surged out of him and into Loki. It sang through him, suffusing him with that fleeting high of joy and abundance. When it passed it left him with tears in his eyes and a sweet melancholy in his breast.

Thor fell over Loki’s back for a breath or two, his forehead resting between Loki’s shoulderblades.

“Better now?” Loki asked, fighting to catch his breath.

“Yes,” Thor said. “Are you ok?”

“Stop asking me that. If I wasn’t, you’d know, believe me.”

The steam from the bath left Loki lightheaded as they washed up again. Thor got out of the bath first and held a towel out for him. It made Loki blush, for some reason. 

“We should eat something,” Thor said. 

Loki’s stomach growled at that, and he realized he hadn’t left their apartments or eaten anything at all since before everything went to shit.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Loki said. “I can hardly bear to look at these walls any longer.”

Thor gave him that same odd look he’d been wearing on and off since last night, and Loki threw his wet towel at him.

“And stop looking at me like that,” Loki said. “I can’t bear to look at that either.”

They went to the kitchens and collected fresh bread and butter, and bacon, and fruit, and two flagons of hot cider, and took them out onto one of the palace’s many viewing balconies. Loki cast a ward behind them so that they wouldn’t be disturbed. The city lay spread out underneath them. It was always a lovely sight. Asgard’s floating towers and soaring golden spires and delicate walkways were marvels of civil engineering, and the streets cut through them with geometric precision. And then, beyond the man-made elegance, the bands of rolling green farmland that supplied food for the capitol, and the misty dark forest, and the snow-capped mountains.

This early in the season, the morning air still had a bite of frost to it, and Loki was glad to have a hot drink to warm his hands with.

Thor leaned on the balcony railing and stared off into the distance.

“We have to find a way to reverse this,” Thor said.

He didn’t need to say what “this” was. They both knew.

“Do you think it will keep happening?” Loki asked. He picked at a spot on the table.

Thor turned to look at him, his eyes dark.

“Yes.”

Loki closed his eyes and tried not to tremble. Was the urge to fuck already starting to take Thor over again? Was he thinking about fucking Loki even now? The idea of his brother standing there thinking about him with lust in his heart made Loki feel something deep and enormous within him that he didn’t know how to name yet.

Or maybe it wasn’t lust. Maybe Thor was thinking about fucking Loki, but it was disgust that ruled his heart. Maybe he hated Loki for doing this to him.

Somehow, though, Loki didn’t think so. Thor’s careful consideration this morning didn’t speak of disgust. Pity, maybe, but not disgust. Which didn’t actually make Loki feel any better, because if there was anything that he hated, it was pity. Almost anything was preferable to that.

Thor turned his gaze outward again, and frowned.

“Is the forest closer than it was yesterday?” Thor said.

“That’s impossible.”

“Look.”

Loki rose and came to stand next to him. He blinked and rubbed his eyes to be sure they weren’t playing tricks on him.

“Thor…”

A trip to visit Agnar, their father’s steward, yielded troubling news. Reports were pouring in of crops ripening overnight and livestock gone into rut out of season. A town at the forest’s edge had gone to bed nestled in their wheat fields and woken up a mile into the forest. Odin was still off-world and the steward didn’t know what to make of any of it. He was all a-fluster and seemed more annoyed by the princes’ questions than anything else. Thor shared a look with Loki behind Agnar’s back while he was shuffling papers, and they took their leave.

“Do you think mother will know it was us?” Loki fretted as they made their way to the library.

Thor snorted. “Probably. We need to figure this out quickly. What can I do to help you?”

“I need to do a lot of reading,” Loki said. “You should go do whatever it is that you do all day. Try to look...normal.”

Thor huffed out a laugh and passed his hand over his face. “Normal. Right.”

Loki ensconced himself in the back corner of the library with one of the librarian’s apprentices, and sent the poor girl scurrying this way and that to fetch him books all day and well into the evening, as well as toast and tea, both of which went cold and untouched. He read until his eyes blurred about how to undo spells, and the nature of magical links, and fertility rituals, and sex magic, and inherent unconscious seidr manipulation, and anything else he could think of that could possibly be of use. He grew more and more irritable as the day wore on and his research yielded nothing but disappointment.

Thor found him slamming a book shut so hard that the apprentice startled awake from where she had nodded off in the corner. She took one wide-eyed look at Thor and the grim expression on his face and made herself scarce.

Thor was wearing one of those ugly draping wrap things that he liked to wear around the palace.

“Brother,” Thor said urgently. Looking over his shoulder and finding no one around, he twitched the wrap to the side so that Loki could see his cock tenting his breeches again.

Loki cursed. “Already?”

“I’m sorry,” Thor said. He looked ready to cry.

Loki was in a bad mood already, and for some reason Thor’s expression made him angry.

“Well at least you came to me right away this time. Come on,” Loki snapped, grabbing Thor’s hand and tugging him along.

Thor took him standing up against the wet tiled wall of their bath. When the wave of magic overtook them, Loki pressed his cheek to the wall and Thor pressed his cheek to Loki’s shoulder. Loki found himself reaching back and grasping the back of Thor’s head and his fingers tightened briefly in Thor’s hair. Thor murmured something that Loki couldn’t make out.

Oddly, Loki’s mood was better afterwards. He found himself smiling at Thor, and Thor was smiling back, and they both washed up with unsteady hands. 

Afterwards, hair damp from the bath, they walked through the enchanted forest of Thor’s bedroom and into his private salon and called for a late dinner. 

“So I went out to try and act ‘normal’ today,” Thor said, ripping the leg off a chicken. “And when I set foot outside, flowers sprang up in my footsteps.”

Loki tried to imagine it. His brother, tall and broad and fierce and rugged, hair golden in the sunlight, leaving a trail of flowers behind him like a maid from a story. He smiled into his wine glass.

“It wasn’t funny,” Thor admonished. “I’m lucky I only had Fandral with me. He’s the only one who knows anything at all about this.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Loki said. He went to tuck his hair behind his ear and was startled at the length of it; with how immersed in books he’d been today he’d forgotten that it had grown. He should probably cut it. “It’s only that it sounded like such a pretty picture.”

Thor threw a bread crust at him. “I went flying instead. It’s just as Agnar said. I cannot tell you how many fields I flew over with every single beast in them mounting each other. Did you turn anything up at the library?”

“Not yet,” Loki sighed, sitting back and rubbing his eyes.

“What do you need to research, anyway? Surely since it’s your own spell you can simply reverse it?”

Loki made a clucking noise with his tongue. “It’s not nearly that simple. That alignment was special, and the potions I used were special. And I didn’t want to go through all that effort only to have to do it again later, so I also specifically designed the entire thing to be permanent.”

Thor shook his head in disbelief. “Thwarted by competence.”

The assessment secretly pleased Loki.

“Something like that.”

“So what are we going to do? Go to mother?”

“Are you mad?” Loki said. “Absolutely not. Can you even imagine...no. No.”

“What, then?”

“Give me a few more days. I might be onto something.”

Thor’s mood seemed to shift, and he sighed heavily and shoved away from the table to stand and pace. He stopped with his back to Loki, staring into the banked embers in the hearth.

“Can we do this for a few more days?” Thor asked, his voice thick. 

Not for the first time, Loki wished that mindreading was in the subset of powers he possessed. It wasn’t as though Loki had asked for this either, but Thor’s obvious ongoing reluctance was starting to wear on him. He wanted to yank Thor around by the shoulders and see the expression on his face. 

“We don’t have a choice,” Loki said.

*

They did manage to carry on for a few more days. Thor slept on the couch in Loki’s room, and fucked him in the morning, and then again before bed, and it almost started to feel like a routine. Thor was always considerate. Gentlemanly, if one could say that about a man who was fucking his brother. One time, Thor was buried to the hilt and Loki’s breath was coming in short pants and Loki spared a thought to wonder if maybe his mouth might work as well as his ass, but then decided that that was far more active of a role than he was prepared for and held no guarantee of success besides, and so he didn’t suggest it.

He kept thinking about it, though, for some reason.

Loki spent most of the time he wasn’t under Thor in the library appropriating the apprentice, Hilda. She was a newcomer to the library and he’d never worked with her before, but she had an eidetic memory and was possibly the most useful apprentice Loki had ever met. He was going to have to keep an eye on her for the future.

Thor went...somewhere during the days. Loki was too busy to care where. All he knew was that Thor was trying to deal with some of the fallout from their misadventure, and he left him to it.

After a few days of too much research and not enough sleep, Loki ended up falling asleep over a book, and woke to Hilda hovering over him with a worried expression on her face.

“I didn’t know whether I was supposed to wake you, my lord,” she said. “But it’s terribly late.”

The sky was black and Loki’s sleeve was completely soaked where his mouth had been resting. He’d thought Thor would come find him before bed as had been the norm for the past week or so, and he was vaguely unsettled that it hadn’t happened.

“Thank you, Hilda.”

Loki returned to his chambers. He made sure the wards were open for Thor just in case. Ironic, that accidentally leaving them open was what had gotten them into this mess, and now he was doing it on purpose.

He had just dozed off in his bed when that hook in his chest yanked him awake.

Thor was closing the door.

“Where have you been?”

Loki could feel the aura coming off of him. He looked at Thor with his witchsight. He was bright, too bright, burning. He’d waited too long.

“I tried—” Thor started. The moon was full and perfectly framed in Loki’s window, and it cast Thor’s face in silver. Smoothed out all his rugged edges. Turned his eyes into two dark wells. “It doesn’t matter what I tried. It didn’t work.”

“I wish you’d stop,” Loki said, sitting up.

“Stop what?”

“Acting like fucking me pains you so deeply.”

“Loki, this isn’t easy for me—”

“ _It isn’t easy for me either_ ,” Loki said. “But it’s worse when you do that.”

“What would you have me do, then?” Thor asked, his voice rough. “Woo you like a suitor?”

“Tell me the truth. Do you want to fuck me right now?”

Thor closed his eyes. “No. And yes.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Do you really want to know?” Thor took a step closer. “My body wants to crush yours to the bed, and fill you up until the only thought left in your head is how well I’m fucking you, and the only word left on your lips is my name. It wants to make you come over and over again. It wants your pleasure, your moans, your spend, your undying fidelity to me and only me. It wants to take you apart. And then it wants to do it again.”

Thor’s voice was shaking by the end, and Loki was twisting the covers so hard in his hands that the fabric was straining. 

“And my mind knows that you are my brother and you did not ask for this, and I did not ask for this, and that it will surely ruin us both. And that what you are doing for me can...never be repaid…”

“Shut up,” Loki said, his own voice shaking as well. “Just shut up and get over here before you spontaneously combust again.”

“I’ve been holding back so much. I don’t know if I can...control myself tonight…”

“Just do it,” Loki whispered.

Loki had seen his brother on the field of battle hundreds of times. Had watched him slaughter more enemies than he cared to count. But now, standing there in the moonlight, his eyes locked on Loki’s, brow lowered, shoulders squared, Thor had never looked more dangerous. He advanced on the bed. Loki felt a twinge low in his gut. Thor looked like he wanted to eat him alive. Slowly, he crawled up Loki’s body, kicking the covers to the floor and pushing Loki back into the mattress, never breaking eye contact until he buried his hands in Loki’s hair and his face in Loki’s neck and inhaled like a predator scenting its prey. Something crawled into Loki’s chest that may or may not have been fear, and he exhaled shakily.

“You always smell so fucking good,” Thor said.

Loki whimpered.

The sound seemed to break something in Thor. Growling, he started ripping their clothes off. Loki heard fabric tear. The oil was still on the nightstand, thank the gods. His hands fluttered uselessly at Thor’s back as Thor buried his face in Loki’s neck again and shoved the head of his cock into the tender hole between Loki’s legs with no preamble. Ymir’s blood, he was so big. It punched Loki’s breath out of him.

Thor started driving into him, hard, and Loki clutched at his shoulders. Thor’s words played on a loop in his head. _I want to make you come over and over again, I want your pleasure, I want your undying fidelity, I want to make you come over and over again, I want—_

Growling, Thor rose up and pulled Loki up and into his lap. Loki had no choice but to hold onto Thor's neck and wrap his legs around his waist. Thor’s arms went around him, his hands raking up Loki’s back and then clawing his way back down, crushing Loki to his chest as he pumped up into him with unrelenting force. They couldn’t tear their gazes away from each other. Loki had allowed this, given his permission, and yet...yet...

Loki had had other lovers, but no one had ever met him with such hungry passion before. _I want your pleasure, I want to make you come, I want to take you apart._ He gasped when Thor grabbed onto his hips and slammed him downwards just as Thor was thrusting up particularly roughly, and Thor grunted, and Loki wrapped his arms tighter around Thor’s neck and pressed Thor’s face into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and Thor’s teeth found the tendon there and he _bit_.

Loki whimpered again.

Impossibly, for the first time, Loki’s own cock started growing hard. It was trapped between their bellies and it began to thicken and swell, a heat coiling deep in Loki’s core. Embarrassment made Loki squirm in Thor’s arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry” Loki babbled, as though he had done something wrong. As though finding his own desire in this was something that Thor would find despicable. Thor didn’t let him squirm away though, and his arms tightened around Loki, and his thrusts grew all the more hungry.

 _I want your pleasure_.

Loki fisted both hands in Thor’s hair. Held on like his life depended on it. Tried not to let the tears start.

This was _Thor_. Thor, Thor, Thor. _I want your undying fidelity. I want to make you come_.

Thor, who Loki had loved since his first breath.

_...with my name on your lips..._

“Thor,” Loki gasped. “Brother.”

Thor groaned and shuddered and closed his hand around Loki’s cock, and Loki keened, the sound ripped from his throat without his consent.

Loki made a feeble attempt to push Thor’s hand away, but all he managed to do was close his hand over his brother’s so that they were stroking him together. He struggled ineffectually, though even he wasn’t certain if he was trying to get closer to Thor or farther away...but he just needed to _move_ , to twist and buck and writhe...because it felt so good...gods, it felt _so good_...how...why…

Their link flared brightly inside his chest. He could feel Thor through it. Feel his hunger, his need. His—

Thor tilted his face upwards and their lips almost came together, almost, but Loki reached up and put his hand over Thor’s mouth, because he couldn’t bear this, not this too, and Thor kissed his fingers instead.

_...your pleasure, your come, take you apart...come...take you apart..._

Loki came on a long stuttered moan. He hid his face in Thor’s hair, hid the turmoil of his heart. Thor carried him back down onto his back and fucked into him so hard that Loki convulsively tightened all his limbs around him to hold him in, gentle him, but Thor fucked him right through that too, and Loki let him. He let him.

They clutched at each other as Thor spent and his magic overtook them. It was a storm this time, a wild thundering rain. It washed through Loki, cleansing him, and watered the fertile earth of his heart. And though Loki didn’t recognize it quite yet, its questing fingers quickened seeds that had long lain dormant buried there in the darkness.

Loki blinked hot embarrassed tears from his eyes. It was just the spell. It had driven Thor wild and their link had opened and it was just...Thor’s lust feeding into him, that was all. None of it meant anything. Just the spell.

But Thor was collapsed over Loki’s chest now, and Loki found that he was stroking Thor’s hair, and was there a real explanation for that? 

The room was briefly illuminated by a flash of blue, and they both jumped. It seemed that the storm that had washed through them was also a storm in truth, and the thunder cracked loud enough to wake the whole palace. They scrambled away from each other, and Loki quickly tried to dash the tears from his eyes.

“I’m sorry—” they both started saying at the same time, and then Loki was laugh-crying.

“You haven’t caused a storm like that since you came of age,” Loki said. His fluster made the words pour out of him. “Remember the summer you finally started bedding women for the first time? The rains didn’t let up for months.”

The corner of Thor’s lip went up in a smile. “And you threatened to drown me if I didn’t stop.”

“I still might,” Loki half laughed, sniffling. 

Thor reached for him, then pulled his hand back, and Loki gave him a thin watery smile of his own. There was nothing in Loki of bitterness right now, only confusion and heartache. Part of him wanted to run off by himself, curl into a ball and be alone until things made sense again. Another part wanted Thor to reach back out for him and not stop. He knew which he should do, but he had never been very good at following his own advice.

So Loki made an abortive gesture towards Thor too, and then Thor was pulling him in, and he found himself curling into Thor’s chest, and exhaling a long shaky sigh when Thor’s arms came around him. 

“I should not have done that,” Thor said. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“It was just the spell,” Loki said, as convincingly as he could. “And we never need speak of it again.”

Thor was quiet for a long moment, and Loki felt his cheek pressed to the top of Loki’s head. When he spoke his voice sounded stuffy. “Aye. Just the spell.”

*

Loki had something to tell Thor, but it had to wait, because Frigga called them first thing in the morning.

Frigga’s solar was Loki’s favorite room in the entire palace. It was a round room that took up the entire floor of a tower and so held windows all the way around its circumference. Every inch of the wall that wasn’t window was covered in hangings she’d woven herself. Her loom was there, usually with some half-finished weaving upon it, with baskets upon baskets of colorful thread stacked around. It always seemed warm and inviting, somehow, like her presence there for the last millennia had imbued it with some of her essence even when she wasn’t in the room. And it always smelled like her, orange blossom and rainwater.

Though normally Loki would be delighted to breakfast there, today he wished to be nearly anywhere else.

He and Thor trooped up in silence, and after kissing their mother on the cheek sat together on one side of the table. They fidgeted. Tried to act normal. Talked of inconsequential things. Loki mostly pushed his food around his plate because his response to stress had always been to lose his appetite, whereas Thor was the opposite and ate an entire plate of scones all by himself. Loki just hoped that Frigga would only notice that the scones were eaten and not the uneven distribution.

She didn’t bring up what was going on around the capitol with the forest and the crops and the animals going crazy, which mostly just set Loki even more on edge. He didn’t want to bring it up either. But it seemed like something that should have come up. And that it _wasn’t_ coming up meant that Frigga probably wasn’t talking about it on purpose, which meant that maybe she had a reason to, and that maybe that reason was that she knew it must have been Loki’s fault, and the fact that _he_ wasn’t bringing it up was just confirming her suspicions, and—

“You boys have been arguing much less than usual,” Frigga said, interrupting Loki’s frantic circular thoughts. She looked between him and Thor, amused. “Loki, darling, was your working the other day a spell to make you two get along?”

Loki’s cheeks reddened and Thor shoveled another scone into his face to keep from having to answer. Loki was going to throttle him.

“I like to take at least one day a year to abstain from trying to kill him,” Loki said, recovering. “Luckily for him it's today.” It was Thor’s turn to scowl, and Loki made a rude gesture at him.

“That’s more like it,” Frigga laughed. “When you’re done eating, I have a surprise for both of you.”

There was a small ornately carved chest on the floor next to Frigga’s loom, which she opened with a small key she produced from her sleeve.

Inside it were two neatly folded capes.

“One for each of you,” she said, handing the green to Loki and the red to Thor.

Loki shook his open and it fell to the floor. The fabric was heavy and draped satisfyingly over his hands. It was exactly the same color as his eyes. There was a depth to the color as well, an almost-shimmer.

Frigga passed her hand over the fall of fabric, lighting up sigils that had been woven directly into it. They glowed gold before fading away.

“Is this what you did during the alignment?” Loki asked.

“Yes,” she said simply.

Loki saw the lines of _Vegvísir_ and _Ægishjálmr_ and several other sigils, all of them staves of protection and victory in combat. And also—

“ _Lásabrjótur_?” Loki asked, amused. “Do you think that’s a wise one for me?”

“You’ll be opening locked doors whether I help you or not,” Frigga said. “I thought I might make it a bit easier for you.”

Thor shook his cloak out as well. Frigga’s touch made it glow silver. It held all the same sigils of protection and victory that Loki’s did, as well as…

“ _Feingur_ ,” Thor choked out. The sigil for fertility. Loki coughed and Thor flushed red.

“It seemed fitting,” Frigga smiled.

“Of course!” Thor said, too quickly. “Mother, these are magnificent. Your finest weaving yet.”

“The fabric is silk from the iceworms on Jotunheim,” Frigga said. “It’s the last of what was left over from before the war. A lighter, stronger material you’d be hard pressed to find. My boys.” She smiled, tight-lipped with emotion, and put a hand to each of their cheeks. “This is as much protection as a mother’s love can give you.”

Frigga had used her golden opportunity selflessly to protect her children, and Loki had used his in the most selfish manner possible. Maybe he deserved how spectacularly it had backfired. Overwhelmed with love and shame both, he embraced his mother unreservedly. Thor did as well, and then she clasped both of their hands tightly before sending them off.

Loki flung his cloak around his shoulders as they left Frigga’s tower. He hoped that the protection spells would lend him strength.

“I think I’ve figured something out,” Loki said. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“What else is new?” Thor sighed. “Should we go back to your rooms?”

“That would probably be for the best.”

They walked in silence for a moment.

“Do you think she knows—” Loki started.

“Oh, definitely,” Thor said, cutting him off. “She didn’t bring it up once.”

“Fuck. I had hoped I was imagining things.”

“She’s probably just giving us—you—a few days to fix it. Before father gets home. You said you can fix it now, right?”

More or less. Heavy emphasis on the less. “Not here in the hallway.”

*

Thor sat on the couch that had become his bed, and Loki paced nervously around the room. There was no way to say what he needed to say delicately. There was no point in dancing around it.

“I can’t reverse the spell completely,” Loki said.

Thor began cursing and leapt to his feet.

“You said—”

“ _Yet_ ,” Loki said, holding his hand out to keep Thor back. “I can’t reverse it completely _yet_. I needed the alignment to do this in the first place and I’ll need another one to undo it.”

Thor crossed his arms and set his jaw. A muscle in his face twitched. Thor was always breathtaking in his anger, but somehow when he was angry and managing to rein it in he looked even more impressive. The fury of the storm, contained.

It was directed at Loki now, though, and it made him trip over his words a bit.

“I can, ah, what’s the word...make it...less bad…”

“Mitigate,” Thor said flatly.

“Thank you, mitigate it.”

Thor was still stony faced, his voice threatening.

“How?”

“Why are you so angry at me!” Loki cried out. “I’m trying! I didn’t want this either!” Thor had been so tender last night after everything, and his anger now was making something twist and knot inside Loki’s chest.

“I just want it _done_!” Thor insisted hotly.

“Yes, I can see how being in close proximity to me for the last few days has been extremely trying for you,” Loki said, trying not to let his voice shake. “Getting yourself off multiple times a day via me. If only your partner weren’t so vile. I’m sure it’s been absolutely frightful.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it—”

“Do I?”

“Why must you always twist my words?”

“Why must you always give me so much room for interpretation?”

They glared at each other until Loki broke first, turning away.

“Anyway, I can _mitigate_ it. I can siphon off some of your pent up seidr through our link and disperse it. It would be best to have a designated place to put it, of course...if I let it out indiscriminately we’ll just continue having the same community-wide problems we’re having now…”

“Only some of my seidr?” Thor demanded.

Loki’s mouth tightened. This was what had taken up the bulk of his research over the past few days and it was a hurdle he simply could find no way to get over.

“Only some. I won’t be able to get all of it. It will slowly start to build up again, until…”

“Until I need to fuck you.” Thor’s words came out harshly, and Loki winced and closed his eyes. Last night was still achingly clear in his mind. Thor fucking him, spectacularly, and Loki _enjoying it_...coming all over Thor’s chest and hand… _Norns_...

“Yes. Until you need to fuck me.”

“When is the next alignment?”

There were several incidental ones coming up soon, but Loki had researched as thoroughly as he could and he was sure that none of them would be sufficient for what he needed to do. The next one with any amount of power at all was—

“Seven years from now.”

Thor was silent for a beat. “How long? In between each time?”

“I’m not sure. A year maybe?” Loki said.

“So seven times in all.”

“More or less. It’s...the best I can do.”

They both fell quiet, lost in their own thoughts. Loki didn’t want to look at Thor. He didn’t know what he would see on Thor’s face, and he didn’t particularly want to find out. Last night had changed so many things. But now Loki would cast the magic he needed to cast and they would be off the hook for a year, maybe more. _Delaying the inevitable_ a tiny voice whispered, and Loki smothered it.

“I’ve picked a spot in the mountains to send your magic,” Loki said finally. “It’s as far from civilization as you can get. No one should notice. We can do it now. It will only require a short ritual. I already bought the potion I need.” Which had been embarrassing, actually, because he had not needed to buy common potions from the apothecary like a peasant since he was a boy of eighty, but his workroom had yet to be restocked.

“Seven years,” Thor said. “ _Gods_. What will happen if we’re not together when...when we need to be?”

“Oh you know,” Loki said, affecting an unconcerned tone. “You’ll die.”

“How can the Fates have demanded this of us? What did we do to displease them so?”

Loki didn’t know why Thor’s constant decrying of their situation kept making him so angry, but it did. It wasn’t as if Loki had invited Thor into his workshop, asked him to insert himself into his spell, or planned to make his brother have to fuck him. But Loki wasn’t the one acting put upon. Loki was trying to make the best of a bad situation and he would have appreciated it if it seemed like Thor was putting the slightest effort into doing the same instead of constantly reminding him just how intolerable Thor found the entire endeavor.

Loki, at least, still loved his brother despite his egregious error. Loki, at least, was not trying to make Thor feel guilty about it. He might be hanging on by a thread, but he was getting on with it, because they were in this _together_ , and—

“A great many things, I should wager,” Loki snapped. “Are you quite done complaining? Because I’m starting to have second thoughts. Maybe I’ll just go on a vacation to Alfheim and leave you to it. I’m sure mother will throw you a lovely funeral.”

“Loki.” The anger seemed to have gone out of Thor in the same proportion that it had inflamed Loki. “Please. I’m just...you can’t be happy about this either.”

“I’m not the one complaining about it at every fucking turn.”

Thor reached for him, but Loki pulled his arm away. He dearly wanted something to kick. Unfortunately he was in the habit of keeping his room so tidy there was nothing to vent his rage on except his brother, who he only just barely managed not to punt out the window. He slammed the door open instead and gestured for Thor to go first.

“Let’s do this now and get it over with,” Loki said.


	4. Year One

The siphon spell went off without a hitch.

Thor left afterwards, and Loki closed his wards behind him, checking them three times to be sure that Thor was excluded this time. It turned out to be mostly for show, because Thor disappeared. Left the palace for a month. Loki told himself that this was for the best. They both needed space to come to terms with the last week, and, for that matter, the next seven years as well. Loki tried to ignore the pit in his stomach when he found out Thor had left and tell himself it was just irritation at Thor and his pigheaded self-righteousness and not some completely inappropriate mixture of disappointment and loneliness. He mostly failed miserably.

Thor’s absence did give Loki time to finally set Thor’s room to rights, though, and to finally start practicing with his new powers. That was something, at least. He sent poor Hilda scurrying to every corner of the archives digging new things up for him to research and experiment with.

While Loki tried to keep himself busy, spring gave way to summer. Thor’s out of control magic had caused everything within ten leagues of the capital to flower, fruit, and ripen overnight, crop and forest and meadow alike. Farmers tried to replant their crops where they could in time for a proper harvest in the fall, but the natural ecosystem was entirely off kilter. It made for a strange season indeed. Loki found himself discomfited and filled with a restless itching energy. Like he needed to be somewhere, only he didn’t know where.

Loki received a note one morning. There were no fond addresses on it, merely a terse message written in Thor’s hand.

 _Give me an inventory of everything in your lab that was destroyed_.

Loki tried not to be annoyed. What had he expected? A heartfelt letter? A sniveling request? _Hugs and kisses, Thor_? He should just be pleased that Thor was trying to fix what he’d broken.

Loki sent back a list as long as both his arms together, and added in a few things that he hadn’t possessed at all but had always wanted to just for good measure. Furniture, equipment, ingredients, books. Let Thor run himself ragged trying to acquire it all.

Things on the list began arriving piece by piece. Three sets of delicate glassware. Boxes of books, jars of ingredients. A wooden crate stamped with the crest of the Vanaheim royal family on it, the inside padded with straw and cotton batting and holding individually wrapped gryphon eggs. A small blank grimoire the size of Loki’s palm, hand bound in an ironwood cover. Loki hoped that Thor had had to pay dearly for all of them.

Carpenters showed up as well, asking Loki for specifications for the furniture he’d like made. A new work table. Shelving. Loki picked the most expensive materials and the most ornate decoration that he could. 

Thor came back several times over the course of the summer, but never stayed for long before he was away again. It invariably stormed when he was home. They saw each other fleetingly, in the hallways or at dinner. They left each other alone in the bath. Loki absolutely did not care. He did not. Thor had his own life and Loki had his, and sometimes they intersected and sometimes they didn’t; they’d gone far longer in the past without seeing each other. Months at a time. Years. 

Somehow, it had never felt like this though. Like there was something huge and ineffable looming in the empty space between them. No more than two words strung together had passed their lips since the morning that Loki had worked his siphon ritual, and the longer they went without speaking the larger the silence grew and the more impossible it seemed to breach it.

Loki ached to. 

Instead, he kept his distance and learned new ways to use his magic. He could now take on the form of another person—he’d only been able to manage animals before. Being able to assume a new identity was thrilling, and opened up all sorts of new and exciting ways to cause mischief.

He still had the fire wyrm’s heartstone that Thor had won for him and that had, indirectly, caused so many problems. The destruction of his lab hadn’t even scratched it. It was smooth and red and shaped like a teardrop—the last drop of blood from the wyrm’s heart, turned to diamond-hard crystal. He strung it on a pendant and kept it in a drawer next to his bed and, sometimes, took it out and wore it, or simply held it in one hand, stroking it with his thumb. If he’d been pressed he couldn’t have said why he did it, only that he wanted to.

By the time autumn arrived, Loki couldn’t bear the restless itch any longer. He’d just read something in one of the books that Thor had sent him about there being ways to traverse the universe without need for the Bifrost. He put the heartstone pendant around his neck and wrapped his mother’s protective cloak about his shoulders and set about trying to find them.

He succeeded.

The first time he slipped through a crack in the fabric of space-time and ended up on a different branch of Yggdrasil from where he started, a fantastic, almost hysterical excitement overtook him. He nearly whooped with joy, definitely punched the air. _I have to tell Thor about this!_ was his first thought, followed quickly by the sinking remembrance that Thor seemed to want nothing to do with him anymore. 

That was the first moment that Loki truly realized how much he simply missed his brother.

Loki didn’t return home at once. He explored every crack that he could find, catalogued them all. Traveled to new worlds, wore new faces, got up to a bit of his old mischief. Nothing too scandalous. In truth he wasn’t in much of a troublemaking mood. That didn’t stop him from cheating dishonest merchants though, or even honest ones, or collecting shiny useful objects that might have been better off left alone. He slept in taverns and hotels and spacecraft, or outside on the ground, and he dreamed of large calloused hands warm on his hips and golden light in his breast and a living canopy of flowers.

He never did end up cutting his hair.

Asgard’s Midwinter approached. There was always an official ball that both Thor and Loki were expected to attend if at all possible. Loki told himself that avoiding it would be foolish. He returned home several days beforehand, but the first time he saw Thor was at the ball itself. He should perhaps have tried to see Thor sooner, get it over with in private instead of in public, for the instant he saw him a fist closed tight around his heart and a rushing in his head left him dizzy.

Thor was beautiful, as always, though it made Loki’s mouth turn dry in ways that it never had before. He’d shined up his ceremonial armor, and his hair was like burnished gold in the torchlight, and though it was the darkest day of the year his eyes were two fragments of the cloudless summer sky. He was laughing at something. His head was tossed back and his voice somehow cut through the din of the party to shiver into Loki’s ears; Loki found himself instantly jealous of whoever had managed to make his brother laugh like that. The laughter melted from Thor’s face when he saw Loki, and the look he turned on him was the same unreadable thing that had made Loki squirm so uncomfortably during their week of madness. Loki felt that hook in his chest, and it tugged on his heart.

 _Go to him_ , it said.

Thor was standing off to the side of the ballroom, near one of the doorways that led to a series of balconies that overlooked the gardens. Loki snagged a passing server and downed a mug of mead to fortify himself and waited for a lull in the conversation that always seemed to surround his brother. 

“Happy Yule, brother,” Loki said, coming up from behind to stand next to Thor and folding his arms tightly behind his back. He’d let his hair curl naturally today instead of straightening it, and he let it fall forward over his cheek to hide behind it just slightly.

 _Three words_ , Loki thought. _A record, of late._

A fleeting look of happy surprise passed over Thor’s face. “Happy Yule,” he said.

“I trust you’ve been well.”

“Well enough. And you?”

Loki made a small noise of agreement, and silence fell over them for a moment.

“Have my gifts been making it to you?” Thor asked. He was looking out at the room, not at Loki, but there was a hopeful tone in his voice.

“Gifts? Is that what you call them?”

“What would you call them?”

“Restitution.” Loki didn’t even need to look, he could feel the eyeroll. “You could come see for yourself,” he added.

Thor was startled into looking at Loki, and Loki found himself meeting Thor’s eyes. He was actually as surprised as Thor; he hadn’t intended to say that at all. He felt the truth of the words even as they left his mouth though. He wanted Thor to come see. To stop this game of avoidance.

“I—well, yes, I suppose I could—I thought you wouldn’t want me to—”

Loki snorted. “You spend a great deal of time assuming what I don’t want and not nearly enough actually asking me.”

Another awkward silence fell. It left Loki fidgeting and scanning his eyes unseeingly over the room. He hated it. He longed for their old easy camaraderie, or even their fiery arguments. He and Thor had been on the opposite side of disagreements more times than he could count, but they had never before been _awkward_.

“Would you like me to…?” Thor ventured finally.

“Yes,” Loki said, though it came out much more quickly than he’d meant it to, and far too eager sounding. Thor shifted, and he was so near that Loki could smell his hair. Almond, cardamom, and vanilla. The scent memory was shockingly strong and it hit him all in a rush, leaving him breathless and near tears. The day of the accident, the fear that Thor was dead underneath him, the relief when Thor was still alive, the hot press of Thor’s body inside him (over and over again), the embarrassment, the arousal...Thor’s hand on his cock, sticky with his come...Surely it held the same memory for Thor. Why in Ymir’s name would he want to wear it in his hair? Gods, this had been a bad idea, the _worst_ idea…

Just then, an oblivious courtier backed straight into Loki and knocked him into Thor. Thor’s hand went between Loki’s shoulderblades to steady him automatically, and Loki’s cheeks flamed red. Thor snatched his hand back and Loki fairly leaped away, both of them apologizing.

Heart hammering, Loki whirled and began upbraiding the hapless courtier. A couple dressed in a matching peacock feather dress and suit took the opportunity to jump into Thor’s personal bubble. By the time Loki was done reducing the courtier to a sweating babbling wreck, Thor was deep in conversation halfway across the room with a group of people who Loki had absolutely no interest whatsoever in trying to engage. 

Loki cut his losses and left.

*

Thor didn’t come right away. He went off-world first. Loki was initially irritated, but then a package arrived for him after the first week Thor was gone: a handsomely constructed telescope with a wide assortment of lens attachments. _Some more ‘restitution’_ , the note said. _I thought you might particularly like the engraving on the metal bits._ And then, underneath it, _I’ll be back in a week if you haven’t thought better of your invitation._ Loki inspected the telescope and found that each metal band ringing it had been covered in images of birds in various stages of flight—magpies, to be specific, which were Loki’s favored animal form. A bridge between the ground and the sky. Perfect for a telescope. He found himself smiling fondly at the thoughtfulness that Thor had put into it, and fingering the heartstone where it hung around his neck (a place it had been more often than not, lately). With a tutting sound at himself he took his hand away.

When Thor did show up, it was after dinner the night he got back. He came to Loki’s door with two bottles of wine, a small package, and a hesitant smile. After going so long without really speaking to each other, Loki appreciated the formality of knocking on the front door and that Thor hadn’t just bellowed at him from the bath, and that and the bottle of wine he’d already drunk by himself had him smiling back and opening his wards.

“Restitution,” Thor said, and shoved the package at Loki before going to the sideboard fuss over the bottles while he unwrapped it.

“ _Thor._ ” 

Three things had come spilling out of the paper. A book, a small set of matched snakes made of gold with emeralds for eyes, and a semi-translucent purple stone the size of a thumbnail. Loki turned the book over in his hands, dumbfounded.

“This is a _Xytax the Greater_ ,” Loki said, his voice slightly strangled. “Written in his own hand. How in the Nine did you manage to get ahold of this?”

“You haven’t even looked at the starseed yet,” Thor said. His eyes were smiling and his cheeks had gone pink.

Loki picked up the stone where it had rolled across the table and held it up to look through it. There was an entire galaxy inside it, a glittering disc suspended in the center, its spiral arms revolving lazily. It drew Loki in, hypnotizing, and made him lose himself for a moment, the scale of it doing impossible things to his brain.

He snapped his mouth shut and tore his gaze away and shook his head, cursing softly. Thor was looking very pleased with himself, and he held out a goblet of wine for Loki to take.

“And what are these?” Loki asked, taking the wine with one hand and setting aside the two priceless artifacts to pick up one of the golden snakes. Their bodies were wavy like they had been caught mid-undulation, and each was the length of Loki’s hand from fingertip to the base of his palm and slightly smaller around than his pinky.

“Oh, those are just...I thought they looked nice. For your hair. Since it’s so long now.”

“Hair sticks?” Loki asked, amused. “You bring me two treasures worth an entire realm each, and wrap them up in a package with some _hair sticks_?” He couldn’t help it, he started laughing. “You really are the most ridiculous creature in all the universe.”

“You like it all, then?” Thor said, eager.

“ _Yes_ , I like it all, _Norns_. Come here.” Loki took a large gulp of wine, then set it down and twisted his hair up behind his head. “Put them in.”

He’d asked without thinking, so pleased at Thor’s visit and the gifts, but his heart leapt to his throat when Thor hesitated and gave him a look. Of course. Thor didn’t really want to touch him. He was about to drop his hands and try to laugh it off when Thor moved behind him and gently took the twist of Loki’s hair in his own hand. Loki hardly dared to breathe. Thor hadn’t really touched him since...not since… He shivered when Thor’s hand grazed along his neck.

“You missed a little piece,” Thor said softly. Then he was sliding the snakes through Loki’s bun and stepping away.

Loki found himself missing Thor’s touch immediately and he fought to keep his voice light and sardonic.

“So, brother, is this your attempt to buy my favor?”

Thor looked at him over the rim of his goblet for a moment as he took a swig. “That depends. Is it working?”

Loki found himself smiling and shook his head, not dignifying Thor with a proper response. “You may be the most ridiculous creature in the universe and an oaf besides, but come. Tell me how you came to be in possession of such riches.”

It turned out, once they got going, that the silence that had been festering between them wasn’t so hard to dispel after all. 

They moved into Loki’s study and sat on his couch long into the night, drinking and talking and laughing, recounting to each other what they’d been up to for the last three quarters of a year. Thor told the tale of how he’d traveled to six different realms in search of the book he’d given Loki tonight, and how he had defeated an entire burrow of manticores and the pair of sorcerers who had begat them to win the starseed. “I want to build your collection up even better than it was before,” Thor explained, and Loki laughed and called him an overachiever. Loki found himself intensely envious of the adventuring Thor had gotten up to without him, and shared his own discovery of the secret ways between worlds. Thor’s eyes lit up at the information. “I should like to explore some with you,” Loki ventured, and Thor broke into a sunny grin and Loki felt his chest flood with helpless fondness.

Loki had been sprawling lower and lower on the couch as his inhibitions melted away, until he ended up with his head on the armrest and, with nowhere else to put his feet, he thrust them into Thor’s lap. Thor had given him a startled look initially, but Loki had just scoffed and kicked him lightly in the face until Thor started laughing and grabbed his feet to still them. His hand was on Loki’s right foot now, fingers curled around the top of it and his thumb rubbing at Loki’s instep, and Loki wiggled his toes in pleasure.

This was nice. This was good. This was the way things had been before.

And if Loki was noticing things about his brother that he didn’t use to, like the elegance of his hands or the way his smile tugged at that hook in Loki’s chest, well. No one had to know.

*

Winter began drawing to a close and the one-year mark of their disastrous accident drew nearer. Most of Thor’s excess magic had been siphoned off for the past year, but the dribs and drabs that were leftover finally began to build up to a noticeable amount. There were small things, like the way that people flushed in Thor’s presence, or how all the vegetation around the training ring seemed especially vibrant and healthy, or how the groundskeepers all complained that the ivy growing on the palace walls was impossible to keep under control this year. There were some larger things as well. The forest had been cut back to the original tree line, but it was beginning to creep outward again. Nothing like the explosion of growth from before, but enough that Loki noticed it. And when the cows started calving, nearly all of them had twins; usually if twins made it to term they were sickly and weak and didn’t survive, but these were all hale and hearty.

Loki kept checking on Thor with his witchsight, but he didn’t even need it to know that Thor was glowing like a bonfire. Even if he hadn’t been paying attention to the other signs, he could feel it in his chest. Their link. That hook. Its tug was growing ever more insistent.

Loki wondered how long it would be until Thor succumbed. How long he would hold out. They hadn’t yet spoken of it and Loki couldn’t bring himself to be the one to start. He kept thinking of the last time, when his body had taken its own pleasure, and how Thor had been so angry that Loki couldn’t undo the spell completely, so _angry_ that he’d have to fuck Loki again, and the words lodged in his throat. Sometimes he wondered if Thor was so averse to the entire thing that he’d just let himself die rather than go through with it again.

Their old familiarity, partially regained after that first evening back together, began to give way to a kind of stilted almost-formalness. Avoiding intimacy. Avoiding casual touch. Sometimes Loki would catch Thor staring at him a particular way, or they would share a knowing look, but that was the extent of it. A nervous anticipation started building up in Loki’s gut. He couldn’t concentrate on anything. He couldn’t successfully distract himself with anything. He spent most of his time riding, because it got him out of the palace, but not too far, because he didn’t want to be too far away if Thor suddenly needed him...but maybe he _should_ go far away because then Thor would have to seek him out and Loki would know that he actually wanted to do this…

Loki tried to cut himself off when he got into those circular thought patterns. Why did he care so badly whether Thor wanted to be doing this or not? Of course he didn’t. It was absurd. That Loki was going and getting his _feelings_ hurt over it was nothing more than childish nonsense. Which, unfortunately, didn’t seem to help it hurt any less.

So winter turned to spring, and Loki rode, and offered up his heartache to the winds, and waited.

*

The night it finally happened, Loki returned to his rooms near midnight to find his decanters all empty and Thor drunk on the couch in his study. The devil’s ivy on the windowsill, which Loki had pruned back to its original size a year ago and which had been a normal size at breakfast, had grown all the way down the wall and was starting to snake tendrils along the floor.

Loki put his hands on his hips, shook his head at his brother’s pathetic slumped form, and went for dry sarcasm. “If you keep abusing your guest right like this I may have to rethink the ‘Thor exclusion’ in my wards. Yet again. Honestly, with all the trouble you cause me I don’t know why I haven’t banned you permanently yet.”

“You should,” Thor said, voice slurred with drink. “You should ban me...shouldn’t...you shouldn’t let me in. ‘M here b’cause...because…” Thor’s face twisted like he might cry.

Loki dropped his arms and his pretense.

“I know why you’re here. You waited too long.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice when he added, “And you’re too drunk.”

“‘M sorry,” Thor was saying, “‘m sorry, I tried...I thought maybe…”

“You’re a fool is what you are,” Loki said, cutting him off.

So this was how it was going to be, then. Thor finding it so objectionable that he could only approach it stinking drunk. Well, Loki wouldn’t give him the luxury.

“Up,” Loki ordered. He hooked his arms under Thor’s armpits and yanked him upright, then slapped his outspread hand against Thor’s chest. “Try not to fall over.”

None too gently, he hit Thor with a blast of healing magic. It cleared the alcohol from his bloodstream all at once, and Thor sucked in a shuddering gasp. He did fall over, then, backwards to land on his ass on the couch with his mouth still gaping like a fish, and Loki looked down at him with a grim sort of satisfaction at his state.

“We both knew this was coming,” Loki said, “though I’d thought the Mighty Thor would be a bit braver than this drunken coward I found in my room tonight. What’s the matter, then? Couldn’t do this sober? Needed liquid courage? I’m sure you’ve fucked worse, I’ve seen the taverns you frequent—”

Thor had finally regained his wits and he cut Loki off. “That’s not what this is and you know it.”

“Give me a reason to think otherwise. You balk at every turn.”

“Because I don’t want to force myself upon you!” Thor cried. “Can you not understand?”

“Thor,” Loki said, very slowly and clearly, trying to keep his voice steady, “I have been _telling_ you to do this from the very first. You aren’t _forcing me_.”

“Is a choice made in this situation any choice at all? Surely it isn’t. Surely you don’t want—”

“Will you strip even this small bit of agency from me?” Loki asked roughly, stabbing at the air with his finger. “I have made my choice in this and you had damn well better make yours. Spare me your pity and fucking _get on with it._ ”

Loki didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Sweet words? Tender gestures? Or perhaps for them to fall upon each other like beasts? Maybe even just an embarrassed ‘hello brother, it’s that time again, terribly sorry, shall I take you from the front or from behind?’ Whatever he had been expecting, or hoping for, it definitely wasn’t a continuation of Thor’s wallowing, and it had transmuted all of his nerves into ill temper.

He turned smartly on his heel to stomp into the bedroom, but Thor’s hand on his wrist stopped him short. It made the hook in his chest pull tight, and he let himself be pulled down to sit on the couch next to his brother. Thor took both of Loki’s hands in his and gripped them tightly. Loki squeezed his eyes shut and found himself gripping back.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said again, and Loki opened his mouth to tell him exactly where he could stick his ‘sorries’, but Thor ran right over him. “I’ve been selfish. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t want to hurt you—”

“You could try talking to me instead of avoiding me, for starters,” Loki said, focusing on their hands. He felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “And hurting me has never stopped you before.”

“ _Brother_ ,” Thor said, agonized.

Loki sniffled. “Not like _that_ ,” he said, “I only meant...come, we’ve been fighting since before we could walk...surely you know what I mean…” But Loki found his tongue quite tied and useless and couldn’t find the words to elaborate any further. There were so many meanings of the word ‘hurt,’ after all, and he didn’t even know what they were talking about anymore. He didn’t know what he felt anymore, either. Not anger, but the yawning ache inside of him was nothing he could name. He just wanted his brother back, whatever that entailed. Wanted his laughter and his camaraderie and his stupid jokes and his embarrassing earnestness...and if that meant a little sex here and there, well, it didn’t seem so high a price to pay, did it?

Thor let go of one of his hands to reach up and cradle his neck. It was an old gesture, familiar, and Loki leaned into it and let himself be comforted by it. Thor tightened his hold. His voice was rough.

“I’m supposed to be the one who keeps you safe. But I can’t keep you safe from me and it’s killing me.”

Thor’s words sent electricity straight to Loki’s core, and, shockingly, he felt the first twinge of desire. Normally he would mock the very idea of Thor being his protector, but all he could think about right now was the other part of what Thor just said, about the last time they had fucked, and how predatory Thor had looked, the feralness of his eyes, the naked lust. He realized with a jolt that a part of him didn’t want to be kept safe from Thor, it wanted him back any way that it could get him, and it wanted the danger, it wanted...it wanted…

“Don’t, then,” Loki said harshly, his eyes snapping up to meet Thor’s. He covered Thor’s hand with his own.

Thor seized his hand and brought it to his lips, laid a long kiss on Loki’s palm, and Loki forgot to exhale.

“Do you know what you do to me?” Thor said unevenly.

Before Loki knew what was happening, Thor rose from the couch and dragged him into the bedroom. Loki couldn’t catch his breath, he couldn’t remember how to breathe. Thor’s hands were everywhere. They bared him to the waist, and he shuddered at the kiss of the cold night air on his skin, then shuddered again when Thor’s hands ran up his flanks to thumb roughly at his nipples.

“Do you know how much I’ve wanted you?” Thor demanded roughly. He pulled Loki tightly to him, buried his face in Loki’s neck, swayed them from side to side. His voice was right in Loki’s ear, velvet dark. “I want to take you in every way a man can take another man. I’ve nearly gone mad with it, being so near you the past few months... You should stab me, brother, you should take me out while you still can—”

Loki’s hands scrabbled at Thor’s sides, but it wasn’t to materialize a knife in his ribs. Just as before, Thor was managing to undo him with words alone, and he clutched Thor tighter to him. He shouldn’t want this, but he did, by the gods he did. Thor’s undivided passion, directed at _him_...it was intoxicating…

“Take me,” Loki whispered.

Thor pulled back to wrap both hands around the back of Loki’s neck, push their foreheads together, their noses brushing, their breath mingling. Loki didn’t know whether he wanted Thor to close the gap and kiss him, or whether that would be too far, and he grabbed onto Thor’s ears and held him there, a trembling stasis as they both grappled with whatever was happening.

Their link flared, a sharp pulse of hunger. Loki didn’t know whether it was Thor’s or his own or neither—just some side effect of Thor’s compulsion. They both bit back groans. Thor bore him back onto the bed and Loki went pliantly, his legs falling open, drawing Thor on top of him.

“I’ve ruined us,” Thor moaned, shoving their pants down.

“Shut up,” Loki gasped. “For the love of everything, just stop talking.”

Loki still had one leg in his pants and Thor’s were only shoved down to the knees when he entered him. Thor had used no preparation at all but the oil, which was currently ruining the sheets, but Loki didn’t care. Thor was inside him and that was all that existed in the world right now. Not the mess, or the awkward position of their half clothed limbs, or Loki’s temper from earlier, or the whole last fraught year.

Thor ignored Loki’s entreaty to stop talking. “I would spill inside you endlessly if I could,” Thor said, rutting into him, his back rounded as he leaned down to scrape his teeth against Loki’s collarbone. Loki grappled with the slope of his shoulders, felt the muscles moving under his skin, bit his lip until he tasted iron. “Every hour of the day. We’d never be apart. I’d fill you over and over, til you couldn’t walk, til it was dripping from you, and then I’d give you more. _Gods_. Loki.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Loki gasped, high and breathless, his hips rising to meet Thor’s thrusts. His belly coiled hotly, his blood aflame. “Give it to me,” Loki managed. “I would have it.” _I would have you._ He was hard now, and his cock was rubbing between their stomachs, and he didn’t even remember to feel embarrassed.

“This is what I’ve become,” Thor growled. He snapped his hips in hard and Loki cried out.

 _This is what we’ve become,_ Loki wanted to correct him, but he couldn’t, for all words had fled.

Thor drove into him, rough, demanding. Loki rocked underneath his brother’s body and Thor rained kisses upon his shoulders and neck. They were sloppy but demanding...sucking...biting...bruising...and they made Loki whine and clasp Thor’s head to his breast...and Thor was fucking him so deep and fast, and Loki was seeing stars, he was seeing all the heavens, and they were all lining up perfectly, they _had_ lined up perfectly, because they had led to this...they had given him _this_...even if it wasn’t real, even if he couldn’t keep it, he had it right _now_ , and gods, it was devastating and wonderful in equal measure...

Thor’s rhythm began to falter, until with one last pointed thrust he shook apart in Loki’s arms. Loki held him through it, his own mouth falling open as the magic surged through their link and passed through him. He’d remembered how it felt, academically, but he hadn’t _remembered_ until it was happening again, here, now. And it wasn’t just life and birth and growth, it was love and desire and overwhelming need, and it was molten fire in his veins, and he _needed_ to spill, he needed it more than anything, but how could he...Thor was done, this was over, at least for now, and there was no excuse to continue, none at all…

Suddenly wet heat enveloped him, and with a shock Loki realized that Thor had moved down his body and taken Loki’s cock in his mouth. He nearly cried at the unexpected intensity of it.

“ _Ah-h-h,_ ” he stuttered out, fisting his hands into Thor’s hair, unable to contain himself as he thrust into the back of Thor’s throat, once. He looked down at Thor’s golden head and met his smoldering blue gaze, as transfixing as a sword through the chest. He whimpered. “Thor.”

He spent down Thor’s throat, throwing his head back with a high strangled moan. Thor swallowed it all, then licked up Loki’s length to lay a tender kiss on the oversensitive head of his cock. It was that last gesture that finally tipped Loki over. He’d been perilously close to the edge for such a long time. Falling was almost a relief.

 _I’m in love with my brother,_ he thought dazedly.

Thor made to get up, but Loki couldn’t help himself; he grabbed for Thor’s hand and pulled him up on top of him instead, wrapped his arms around him, and Thor rolled them onto their sides and hugged Loki right back.

The emotion within Loki was too big for words, or even tears, and filled him so completely there was barely even room for breath. He didn’t know where the edges of it were, didn’t know if he could bear to find out, and he couldn’t bring himself to speak, only cling. Thor’s grip spoke of desperation as well. Loki pretended briefly that it was because Thor felt the same way he did, but he knew it wasn’t true. It was the spell. He let himself have this one moment, though, and held Thor to him with trembling arms.

“Let me go get a cloth for you,” Thor finally murmured, and Loki nodded. Thor kicked his pants off the rest of the way, and while he padded bare-assed into the bath, Loki reached down to where Thor’s spend had dripped out of him onto his thighs and touched the sticky wetness with his fingertip. Before Thor could come back and before Loki could think better of it, he licked it off his hand and shuddered.

“Alright?” Thor asked, coming back in with a damp cloth.

“Alright,” Loki said.

Thor stood looking out the window, his back to Loki, his arms crossed. His shoulders looked tight, like he was pulling in on himself.

“I don’t know why I say the things I do,” Thor said tightly. “When—” He scoffed at himself and sniffled. “You should not have to hear that from me. I don’t know why I keep making it worse—”

Loki’s pants were still hanging on by a leg. He tugged them on and went to Thor. Softly, like he was trying to gentle a spooked animal, he put his hand on Thor’s arm. He still had no words, but right now he didn’t need any. Thor turned to him, despair written plainly across his face. Loki shook his head mutely and wrapped his arms around Thor’s waist. For an awful second Thor did nothing, but then his arm went around Loki, and Loki put his head on Thor’s shoulder, and they stood and held each other and looked out the window upon Asgard together.


	5. Year Two

What do you do when you’re in love with your brother?

It was not a question Loki had ever imagined he might have to grapple with, and he handled it very poorly.

Thinking that it might simply be some sort of misplaced desire, Loki began visiting brothels. Perhaps the problem was just that he hadn’t been physically intimate with anyone but Thor since the incident. He started with taking a woman, and though her enthusiasm was admirable (if slightly overdone), it proved far less than satisfactory. So he fucked more women, and had them fuck him, and then men as well, and sometimes both together, in every configuration his considerable imagination could devise. The cavalcade of partners did nothing to ease the ache of his heart. None of them came anywhere close to igniting the fire inside him that Thor did.

Maybe it wasn’t just sex he needed. His partners had all been bought and paid for. Perhaps that was cheapening the thrill.

So Loki started taking the forms of other men, and visiting taverns, and seducing people.

It was marginally more exciting at first. There was the excitement of the chase, after all, and of conquest, for he had to entice each of them to his bed. But ultimately, it was all empty. His flattery was meaningless and insincere. He cared nothing for any of them. He began to set higher bars for himself, such as making his form more and more unattractive, so that winning his target’s favor felt like more of an accomplishment.

Once, he took the form of a woman. He had been delighted with it when he was in his own apartments; the face that looked back at him in the mirror was beautiful and sharp and haughty, and yet the curves of his body were so soft under his own wandering hands. He touched himself curiously between the legs and found it so pleasing that he did it again, and again.

His delight was quickly dashed, however, when he took his new form out to a tavern and found himself the target of every drunken lech in the room. He picked the least objectionable of the lot and took him upstairs, but no sooner had the man’s huge clumsy hand fondled his breast than Loki changed his mind and shoved him away in disgust. The man didn’t take kindly to Loki’s refusal. He spat vile names and tried to hold him down, so Loki left him with a knife between the ribs. He would let no man touch him like this again, much less take him. 

While Loki was scurrying around trying to drown his feelings in sex, Asgard was playing host to border and trade negotiations between two other realms. They were both protectorates of the crown, and their diplomatic entourages were staying in the palace itself. There was a constant stream of meetings and state functions and dinners that both Loki and Thor were forced to attend, and even when they were in an unofficial capacity they were expected to behave with an extra layer of decorum the entire time the negotiations were happening.

It made Loki’s trysts that much more stupid, but at this point they were starting to feel like a compulsion. Like if he didn’t have these sordid clandestine plans to focus his energies on that his stress would just come out in other, worse ways. Some part of Loki almost wished he would get caught sneaking around. Having a nice scandal to be in the middle of would surely be a welcome distraction. He could imagine Thor’s reaction, too. His disappointment in Loki’s behavior, or rage, or maybe even jealousy…

No. Best to stop that line of thought before it grew roots.

The idea of Thor cornering him was sorely tempting though, because at the moment Thor was paying him about as much mind as a visiting cousin. Which was to say he was unfailingly polite and friendly at all of the public functions they had to attend together, but never sought Loki out in private; indeed they had not been alone together since the last time they’d fucked. Every inch of ground they’d gained had been lost again. Loki was complicit in the avoidance, if truth be told. He never sought Thor out either. It was already everything he could do to hold himself together in his brother’s presence publicly. He had no idea what he’d do behind closed doors. Probably embarrass himself spectacularly, or drive Thor away irrevocably, or both. 

It didn’t stop him from imagining, though. Daydreaming about Thor catching him red-handed fucking some other man, and how Thor might beat the other senseless, and then crush Loki to him and take him, right there, the other’s blood still on his knuckles...

Loki would find himself staring at Thor’s hands at dinner and imagining them tangled in his hair, and he’d excuse himself and change his face and find a servant to tumble in a broom closet. Or he would watch Thor speaking, watch his lips and the way his tongue would dart out to wet them, and Loki would remember how they felt wrapped around his cock and the heat would rise to his cheeks; he’d sneak out later and fuck three people and somehow it wouldn’t be able to drive the memory away, and by the end he’d hate them, all of them, because none of them were Thor.

Occasionally he would catch Thor looking at him. He found Thor’s face utterly impossible to read.

 _Talk to me_ , Loki wanted to say. _Tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me you want me, spell or not. Tell me your heart beats for no other, for mine has surely ceased as well. A single word and I will follow you into ruin._

But he didn’t, and Thor didn’t, and so Loki suffered in silence.

*

The negotiations took them well into the fall harvest, which was double the usual amount. There were pumpkins the size of cows, and trees so heavy with apples that their trunks threatened to snap in two, and so much wheat there was nowhere to put it all. Loki found it concerning. He feared that they needed to check on the place he had been sending Thor’s excess magic to.

Loki mustered his courage the next time Thor was in their bath and sauntered in as casually as he could. By unspoken agreement they'd been avoiding each other here, Loki bathing in the morning and Thor in the evening, and Thor startled when Loki entered, clearly not having expected him. Loki had only an instant to take in Thor's tipped back head and open mouth and his arm moving under the water before Thor's hands flew up to grip the side of the pool tightly.

“You surprised me,” Thor said gruffly.

“Please, by all means, continue,” Loki said. “Don't let me interrupt.” His pulse hammered in his temple. He'd thought to interrupt Thor washing his hair, not having a wank, and he was finding that his brain was quite leaking out his ears. Was Thor thinking about him while he stroked himself? No, best not to think about it...

Thor only gave him a look, so Loki continued.

“Surely you've noticed the harvest,” Loki said. Thor nodded. “Your magic is supposed to be going to the place in the mountains I linked it to, not hanging around here affecting things. We need to go check on it. The mountain.”

Thor cursed and rubbed a dripping hand over his face.

“How soon?”

“As soon as we can. Tomorrow would be best.”

“I'm having breakfast with the Neroni contingent tomorrow,” Thor said. “After that?”

“Perfect,” Loki said, and turned on his heel to leave. “I'll leave you to it, then.”

“Loki—” Thor started. 

But Loki was already closing the (doubly warded) door to his room behind him. He leaned against it and slid down to the floor and absolutely did not try to listen to what Thor might be doing on the other side.

*

Mjolnir took them to the mountains together. Loki could have taken his magpie form, or even that of a hawk or an eagle, but if he’d insisted on flying himself, Thor would have arrived hours before him. No bird could match the sheer speed and arrow-straightness of Mjolnir’s flight.

That was what Loki told himself anyway, but he couldn’t deny the part of him that also simply enjoyed having Thor’s arm around him like this, their bodies pressed tightly together, Thor’s strength the only thing between him and disaster. Flying with Thor was one of life’s simple thrills, and nothing could truly dampen it, not even a year and half of awkward fucking. 

Loki tucked himself tighter against Thor’s side and tried to keep his watering eyes open. The fields and forests of Asgard streamed by underneath them, their shadow streaking over the ground, and Loki felt that lurching weightless exhilaration that he always did. He wished they could just keep flying forever.

All too soon they reached the mountains. Loki had chosen a remote spot deep in the heart of the range, the far side of a soaring craggy peak surrounded by a dozen more of the same.

“There!” Loki yelled over the whipping of the wind, squeezing Thor and pointing. “Set us down there!” The rock ledge he was indicating was barely large enough to fit both of them, but Thor set them down deftly with the ease of long practice. Loki clung to him even after their feet had purchase, afraid that if he let go he might simply plummet over the side. “Can you squeeze through there with those absurd shoulders of yours?” Loki said, nodding at the crack in the stone face in front of them. It stood twice their height but barely wide enough to shimmy in sideways. They were far above the treeline, but Loki noted with some consternation that green leafy vines were creeping out of the gash. _Always with the damned ivy._

Thor rolled his eyes. “Watch me.”

They went in single file through the leafy darkness. Loki had a moment of panic when he got to a spot where the walls of the tiny passage pressed so tightly against his chest and back that he was stuck, and the panic made him want to gulp for breath, but he couldn’t because there was no room to inflate his lungs. Slowly, he made himself exhale, out and out until he’d deflated just enough to shove himself through the constriction.

 _Stupid_ , he thought to himself, _you could have just turned yourself into a snake_.

The two of them spilled out into a huge dim cavern and their mouths both fell open in awe.

It was an eerie, glowing paradise.

The walls and ceiling of the cavern were covered in soft phosphorescent moss. Loki touched it with a wondering hand. It was a foot thick or more. His fingers glowed when he pulled them back. There were mushrooms that towered over their heads, and vines everywhere, as thick around as their bodies. A giant luminous moth floated past them. Its wingspan must have been the same as Loki’s outspread arms. A splashing sound made them both turn their heads, and they saw a huge serpent-like eel rear out of a dark pool of water to snap up a dangling spider the size of a dinner plate. White flowers bloomed everywhere, growing on everything. 

In the center of the cavern was a giant tree. Its roots had fractured the rock beneath it and its branches reached up to do the same to the ceiling; it had managed to break through in more than one place and several weak shafts of sunlight pierced all the way down to the floor. Fruits of every variety hung heavy on its branches, apple and pear and quince and plum and others Loki couldn’t name, and small animals scurried through the canopy.

No, not small. They only seemed that way because of the size of the tree. Those squirrels were the size of hunting hounds.

“It looks like Yggdrasil itself,” Thor breathed.

Loki turned his witchsight on the scene in front of them and was nearly blinded by the brightness.

“It shouldn’t be like this so soon,” Loki said. “I’d thought it would get to this stage by the time I was ready to reverse the spell, not in a year and a half. It’s full here, absolutely full, and spilling over. That’s why the harvest was so affected.”

“Can you spread it out maybe?” Thor asked. “So that it’s not so concentrated?”

“I don’t think so,” Loki said. “The nature of the siphon spell doesn’t really allow for that. It’s...too complicated to get into here. I barely understand it myself.”

“Could we burn this all down?” Thor asked. “Reset it and start anew?”

“I suppose we might…”

“Seems a shame, though.” Thor walked a bit farther into the cavern and set his hand on the bulbous stalk of a mushroom whose cap could have served as a respectable roof for a shed. “I can’t believe this was all me.”

“All you,” Loki agreed.

“Maybe…”

Thor trailed off. The cavern seemed to breathe with them. It filled Loki with an odd sort of peacefulness. It simply felt _alive_ in here, and good, and like Thor. A tightness seized his chest. It was almost like when Thor spent in him. He suddenly wanted it, right here, right now, in this place of Thor’s making. Wanted to fuck his brother right here in the moss, surrounded by him completely. 

“I won’t burn it,” Loki said, with a conviction that surprised himself. “I’ll change the location, pick a different spot to send your magic. We can move it whenever we need to. The energies here will dissipate eventually. And in the meantime…”

Thor turned to him and raised an eyebrow and Loki took a breath to steady himself.

“In the meantime it might do well for you to spend as much time off of Asgard as you can.”

*

Loki switched the target of his siphon spell and as soon as Thor's presence wasn't required in Asgard he gathered his friends and went adventuring. He didn't take Loki with them. It filled Loki's throat with bile.

Fall became winter and winter became spring and Loki's hurt and jealousy festered. Thor didn’t even come home for Midwinter. It should be Loki haring around with his brother, not Sif and those other idiots. He missed Thor with a physical ache. It should be just the two of them, exploring Loki's new secret pathways, eating and drinking and chasing the kind of fun that led to trying to worm their way out of interstellar diplomatic incidents.

A small sentimental part of Loki hoped that Thor missed him too. Hoped for more of Thor's “restitution”, or a note, or some kind of word. When Thor did actually write him once, Loki burned the letter out of spite, then panicked and reformed it from the ashes.

He stopped fucking people. He didn’t stop bringing himself off though, and he stopped even trying to pretend he was thinking of anything other than Thor's voice rasping in his ear _I would spend inside you endlessly_ , or Thor's cock in his ass, or Thor's mouth hot and wet on Loki's own prick. He imagined sucking Thor's cock too, what it would feel like on his tongue. The faces Thor would make. The way he would say Loki's name. In his fantasies they kissed as well. That was the most embarrassing part. The rest was just sex, possibly just an artifact of the spell, but kissing…

More than once Loki woke from a warm and hazy dream with the phantom echo of Thor's lips tender and soft upon his own and it was all he could do not to weep. Once after one of those dreams he took his magpie form and flew to the cavern in the mountains and just stayed there for a day. Thor’s magic was no longer being sent here, but its residual effects were still all around, and enough of his energy remained that Loki felt comforted by it. It was a blanket that he let himself be wrapped in, warm and safe.

The second anniversary of the incident approached. Thor hadn't returned. His absence did ameliorate the effects he'd had last year; the spring was almost, but not quite, normal. Loki kept staring at the devil's ivy in his study and worrying his lip. Thor had to come back soon. He had to. If he didn't…

Thor didn't come back. And he didn't come back. Loki's worry and hurt started to turn into panic and anger. Was Thor going to make Loki seek him out? Come crawling, begging? 

No. Loki would not. He refused. Let Thor make a move for once.

Loki woke one morning to that hook in his chest. It yanked him so forcefully that he shot up in his bed with a shout and grabbed at his heaving breast.

He was at the Bifrost as soon as his frantic legs could get him there. He nearly took Heimdall by the shoulders and shook him till he opened the bridge, but somehow he managed to gasp out some kind of words that had Heimdall inserting his sword into the Bifrost mechanism and hurling him through space.

“Brother!” he yelled as soon as he felt the ground under his feet. “THOR!”

Sif nearly ran into him.

“Loki!” she gasped. “Quickly, we can't figure out what's wrong with him.”

“Bring me to him, then take the others and go home,” Loki growled. “I know _exactly_ what's wrong with him.” _I'm going to fucking kill him myself is what's wrong with him._

They were on top of a grassy knoll, surrounded by gently rolling countryside. Alfheim, probably. Maybe Vanaheim. He'd need to see the constellations to be sure, but it was only early afternoon by the light quality. Sif led him quickly down the slope to their campsite and Loki strode through the tall grass angrily, crushing it with his boots.

Thor was sitting on the ground with his head between his knees. Loki could feel the magic coming off of him without even trying.

“Go,” Loki barked at Sif. “All of you!” he snapped, gesturing at Volstagg and Hogun. Fandral gave him a narrow eyed look that Loki returned icily. “I’ll handle it from here.”

Loki was already rounding on Thor when he heard the crack of the Bifrost carry Thor’s friends away, and he put them from his mind immediately.

“You _idiot_ ,” Loki hissed. “You thrice-bedamned fool, you coward, you _ass_.” Thor raised his head to say something, but Loki kept going. “What were you _thinking_? How many fucking times does this need to happen before you get this through your _incredibly thick skull_?” He was striding towards Thor with every word, and by the end he had reached him and began kicking him. “Get up. GET UP.”

Thor shoved at him and staggered to his feet. Loki was so furious he could barely see, much less think. He shoved Thor right back.

“Do you expect me to just let you die!” Loki yelled. “Is that what you want? Would you rather die?”

“And why not!” Thor roared, finally having found his voice. “What good can be done by one as accursed as I am!”

“Accursed? Accursed?! Am I truly so monstrous as all that, that my touch _accurses_ you!”

“This isn’t about you, it’s about _me_ —”

“And that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it,” Loki snarled. “You’re selfish and cruel and vain—”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you—”

“ _And what is that supposed to mean?_ ” Loki was trembling with fury, and he shoved Thor in the chest again. And again. Thor put up his arm to hold Loki off, not fighting back, and it somehow made Loki even more enraged.

He punched Thor squarely in his stupid, handsome face.

Thor reeled back and then came at him swinging and they went down in a tangle of arms and legs, all thrown fists and vicious elbows and knees. Loki landed a satisfying hit to Thor's ribs that had him curling over, and Thor head-butted Loki in the bridge of the nose so hard he saw stars for a moment.

It felt incredible, actually. Cathartic. All of Loki's bottled up everything from the past two years flowed out and condensed at the end of his fist, and he swung it with abandon. Thor wasn't holding back either, and Loki welcomed his blows as much as he relished landing his own.

This was passion. This made Loki finally feel like he might actually mean something.

They wrestled there in the dirt like the two fools they were, and up the side of the knoll, trampling a path in the grass and bruising and bloodying each other. Everywhere Thor touched the ground, buttercups and violets and daisies sprang up instantly. Despite the beauty around them, they fought dirty. They cried out, grunted, panted, hurled insults. Pulled each other’s hair. Went for the eyes, the groin.

Finally their wills began to give out. Thor's parries grew clumsy and Loki's hits started weakening. He launched himself at his brother and brought them down again together, knocking the breath from them both. Loki grasped and flailed until he'd managed to climb on top of Thor and pin him down in the grass. Now that the anger was mostly spent, the energy between them changed to something else.

“Why is it always about you?” Loki said wretchedly, sitting astride Thor's thighs and grabbing his collar, shaking him. Flowers bloomed to life around the outline of Thor’s body on the ground, haloing him in an explosion of color. Thor gripped Loki’s arms and held on tightly enough to bruise. “Why can't it be about me?” Loki asked, voice shaking. A sob started gathering in his chest and tears pricked his eyes. “Why can't I have anything I want?”

“What do you want?” Thor said, his voice hoarse from yelling, his eyes blue fire, and his fingers dug into Loki's arms so hard that his tears weren't entirely from emotion.

“I don’t want to do this alone,” Loki sobbed. “I can't do this without you, why are you making me do this without you—”

“You sent me away from you. You told me to leave Asgard,” Thor said gruffly.

“ _You could have brought me with you_ ,” Loki cried. “I keep telling you but you don't _listen_. Listen to me now, I beg you, please. We're in this _together_ , I don't hate you, I—”

Thor flipped them suddenly, quick as a viper, and his weight drove Loki’s breath out of him in a rush. A small wordless sound escaped him as Thor pressed down against him and started growling in his ear.

“You want me around? Is that what you think? All I think about every day is fucking you, do you know that? Could you be in my presence knowing that? It's not just when my blood is up from this damnable spell, it's all the time. Not an hour goes by that I don’t imagine it in some way. I don't know what I'd do if we were alone, I don’t know if I’d have control of myself, and it frightens me.”

“We were alone in the mountain,” Loki whispered, trying to stop his tears, his frazzled mind latching onto the last thing Thor said, and Thor laughed bitterly.

“Aye, and I nearly threw you to the ground and had you right there, whether you were willing or not.”

“But you didn't.”

Thor rose up so that he was sitting on Loki and clasped his hands firmly on either side of Loki's neck. Loki was trapped, helpless. Thor thumbed roughly at the juncture of his jaw.

“I'm going to now.”

A fine shudder passed through Loki, and his cock twitched. His voice was barely audible.

“I know.”

Thor sat back on his heels and hauled Loki towards him by the waistband of his breeches.

“Get rid of these or they’ll end up as rags,” Thor growled. “Gods, _Loki_ , I’m not—I can’t—”

Loki exhaled and their clothes wafted away like smoke. Thor groaned. His hands closed around Loki’s hips and pulled his ass up into his lap, Loki’s legs falling apart to either side of him, and Thor roughly palmed his cheeks apart, then squeezed Loki’s thighs, pushing his legs out wider.

It made Loki tremble, and when he licked his lips he tasted blood from their fight. There was blood on Thor too, a cut over his eye, scratches on his neck, and his cheek was smeared with dirt. His hair was in wild disarray. He looked fierce and so, so lovely. Loki wanted to lick him, blood and sweat and dirt and all. He wanted to taste every inch of that glorious skin.

Thor yanked Loki’s bottom up higher until he was forced to hook his legs over Thor’s shoulders and then Thor _licked_ him, right over his fluttering hole, and Loki thought he might die. His hands scrabbled in the grass, pulling up handfuls of it, and Thor licked him again and Loki couldn’t help arching his back and crying out softly.

Thor’s voice was a constant low growl at this point. “Conjure us some oil. I need to be inside you.”

“You always wait too long,” Loki said through the tightness in his throat. He did as he was bade, and shoved a vial of oil into Thor’s hands. Thor dropped Loki’s legs and began to slick himself, and Loki scooted back and propped himself up on his elbows to watch. Gods, Thor’s girth was magnificent. He’d felt it enough times now, but he’d never had the opportunity to really appreciate it properly. He wasn’t going to get it this time either, because in an instant Thor was on top of him, his hand going between Loki’s cheeks to slick him too, and then that magnificent cock was there, right there, bullying its way past Loki’s entrance and they both gasped.

“I’m always so rough,” Thor moaned. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“If you didn’t wait so long it wouldn’t have to be like this,” Loki grunted out as Thor worked his way deeper. “Don’t wait next time. I want to help you, let me help you, please— _ahhhh_.” Thor had brushed past that sweet spot inside and Loki couldn’t help but moan. He raked his nails down Thor’s biceps, adding more scratches to Thor’s collection, and pulled him closer.

“I’m not worthy of you,” Thor said despairingly into Loki’s neck, and Loki felt pierced to the core. Thor’s words terrified him. That bright, shining, golden Thor could feel like he was being brought so low by Loki—

“Don’t you dare say that,” Loki said, voice rough with emotion. “Don’t you _dare_ say I can make you unworthy. Don’t put that on me.”

Loki had grabbed two handfuls of Thor’s hair and he pulled his face up until they were staring helplessly into each other’s eyes.

“Thor. _Please_.”

Thor shifted inside of him and Loki clutched at his neck, arched up into him, and they couldn’t look away from each other. Their link chose that moment to flare to life. Loki felt like his soul was being bared, like Thor could see straight through him to the very depths of his heart. Hunger and need and yearning and sadness and love with no clear source flooded between them, and, overwhelmed, Loki turned his face to the side and felt a tear slip down his cheek.

“No,” Thor said, beginning to move, and he leaned down and kissed the tears from Loki’s face. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Thor kissed his cheek again. “I didn’t,” he murmured, over and over again, thrusting in and out, driving himself into Loki’s body. “You have to know I didn’t.”

“I know nothing,” Loki gasped.

“Brother, brother,” Thor said with every rock of his hips, his voice low, “my beautiful brother. You make me want to be worthy of you.”

Loki could feel the ground moving beneath him, not just rocking, _moving_ , every blade of grass, every flower stalk, every creeping vine. His head was held fast to the ground by the roots that had tangled into his hair. He tipped his chin back, wrapped his legs around Thor’s waist, let the words wash through him.

 _My beautiful brother_ , Loki thought, _yes, that’s you._ His heart felt two sizes too large for his chest and he was so in love he thought he might die of it.

He was hard, so hard, and his cock was leaking, and the friction against Thor’s belly was maddening in its irregularity. Loki had a wild thought to try and flip them over, to ride Thor wantonly, stroke himself, make Thor stroke him, to lean down and kiss him and kiss him and—

“ _Nnnn_ ,” Loki moaned as Thor’s hand closed around his cock and began stroking him. “Yes, ah-h-h, just like that...just…” He found himself mouthing at Thor’s jaw, holding their faces together and planting messy open mouthed kisses on his cheek, his temple, his eyebrow, his eyelid—the side of his nose—scraping his teeth against Thor’s chin—

And Thor turned his head slightly, just the smallest bit, and Loki kissed the corner of his mouth, and, gods, he should stop, he should stop, this was not a romance, this was not a love story—

And then Thor’s lips were upon his, and Loki gasped into it and lost himself. Thor’s hand was on his cock, and he was filling Loki so completely, so thoroughly, and Loki kissed him desperately, trying to get closer, though they were as close as two people could be—and his heart felt as though it might burst from the strength of the emotion welling in his chest...and he just wanted...he just needed...Thor, he just needed _Thor_ —and Thor was _right here_ —

—and the rising wave within him carried him up and up until—until—Loki moaned against Thor’s lips as he came all over Thor’s hand and his own belly, came and came in shuddering waves, and he was still coming when Thor spent as well—

They blazed golden, on the physical plane as well as the aetherial.

When Loki came back to himself he realized he wasn’t the only one crying this time. Thor was weeping gently and a soft warm rain was falling upon them, the sky a canvas for his heart.

They were lashed fast together. Every growing thing that had lain dormant in the soil had grown up around them, twined over them and through their tangled limbs until they were completely ensnared, and all of it in bloom. Butterflies covered them like a soft fluttering blanket.

Loki wanted to just dissipate into the air to be dispersed into the ground by his brother’s tears. Surely this was how he died. How was he to live after tasting this?

Ironically, all the physical hurts he'd sustained while fighting with Thor had healed themselves. He found himself stroking Thor’s hair while Thor wet his chest with tears and rain.

“Don’t leave me this time,” Loki whispered. _I’ll die. I’ll die with you as well, but that death will be the sweeter one._

Thor shifted slightly and the butterflies all lifted off at once in a cloud of iridescence.

“I can’t,” Thor said. Loki didn’t know what he meant. _‘I can’t leave you’? ‘I can’t do what you ask’? ‘I can’t do this anymore’?_ Something else entirely?

But they said nothing more, and they held each other until the rain stopped and goosebumps pebbled their skin and Loki worked his seidr and made the vegetation withdraw. And they rose unsteadily to their feet, and Loki redressed them in silence, and they went back to Asgard together.


	6. Year Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gentle reminder to those of my commenters who seem to be a little worried: the story is tagged "angst with a happy ending" <3

Loki’s impassioned plea had finally gotten through to Thor it seemed, for he came back to Asgard with Loki and he stayed. And they tried. They really did try to be normal. Thor spent most of his day training or attending council meetings. Loki spent his in the library with Hilda, or with one of his doubles in the library and he himself invisible and watching Thor train. They dined as usual, frequently breakfasting with their mother and taking dinner together in the great hall with the court or at taverns with Thor’s friends. Sif and the others were full of questions when Thor and Loki first returned, but Loki spun them a tale of a potion Thor had nicked from him thinking it was something alcoholic, a charm gone wrong, and there was even enough truth to it that Loki didn’t need to try very hard. Thor’s friends were used to strange things happening sometimes—Loki was the God of Mischief, after all—and they didn’t question it to any great extent. Thor backed up his story, which did much to cover up any suspicions.

Fandral still reserved certain looks for him, however, and Loki knew he might need to confront him separately. He'd been there as a mostly ignorant party to the initial incident, and then he'd been there again. The signs were all the same, down to the aura of arousal Thor threw off at the height of it, and Fandral wasn't a complete idiot despite the cheerfully oblivious facade he liked to project. He might suspect something more serious was going on.

Fandral kept his silence for now though, and so Loki did as well.

Despite the more-or-less normalcy of Thor and Loki’s daytime routines, however, they did not spend any time in each other’s chambers. That would have been too much for both of them.

It was only a little different. Sometimes they would catch each other’s eye, and Loki would imagine Thor on top of him—and the way Thor looked at him Loki knew he was imagining much the same—and they would flush and then laugh far too loudly at Fandral’s next jest. They kept a careful foot of distance between them most of the time, very unlike the casual invasion of personal space that they used to practice. Once when they were drunk after an evening of tavern-going they walked to their chambers together, and Thor pulled Loki into a mead-scented embrace and nuzzled his neck before fleeing into his room. Loki had fucked himself on his fingers that night and bitten the pillow to keep from crying out Thor’s name.

The devil’s ivy in Loki’s study was his barometer for Thor’s magic. After two months back in Asgard it was starting to grow at a visibly faster rate and it glowed faintly gold under Loki’s witchsight.

Loki caught Thor’s elbow after breakfast one morning. Thor looked shocked at the contact and Loki’s heart clenched in his chest.

“It’s time for you to leave Asgard again,” Loki said.

He’d steeled himself for this for two days, certain that once he said it that Thor would just be off and leave Loki by himself yet again.

“When do we leave?” Thor said instead. Loki couldn’t hide the joy in his surprised smile, and Thor’s answering smile was enough to make his pulse thrill. The helpless love he felt in that moment overwhelmed him. Thor had listened to him and had taken him seriously.

They decided to go down the rest of Loki’s inventory of things that had been destroyed in his lab and seek them out in parts known and unknown. Volstagg stayed behind to spend time with his family, and Hogun had his own familial duties to attend to in Vanaheim, which left Loki and Thor adventuring with Fandral and Sif. Part of Loki would have preferred for it just to be him and his brother, but the other part of him knew that things were too fraught for that right now. At least with Thor’s friends in tow they would have a buffer between their confusion.

Loki had no plans to share his discovery of traveling without the Bifrost with anyone other than Thor, so they left Asgard the standard way: flung through space by Heimdall. Nornheim was the first stop. There were several useful ingredients that could only be collected here, and they planned to stay for at least several weeks.

The first time they were set upon by hostile creatures while camping, Loki disintegrated half of them with a wave of his hand before the rest of their party had even leaped up from the fire. Sif and Fandral gaped.

“When did you learn to do _that_?” Fandral asked afterwards, incredulous. Loki only shrugged and offered an enigmatic smile. His battle prowess, though never insignificant, had always been looked down upon as lesser than everyone else’s. To now have so much more objective power felt extraordinarily good.

“Did you know about this?” Sif demanded of Thor. Thor only shrugged and smiled as well. Loki could have kissed him for it.

Nights around the fire were painful. Thor looked so lovely in the firelight and Loki ached for him. It was nothing to the pain Loki had felt during their last two years of separation though. He welcomed this pain. He welcomed the sometimes awkward silences and the way he kept catching Thor almost touching him but then stopping himself; he welcomed Thor’s humor and his laughter; he welcomed even the nights spent alone in his own tent, for Thor’s was right next to his, and when he woke in the morning Thor was there and not a world away.

One night Loki had one skin of wine too many and he couldn’t help himself; he plopped himself right in the dirt at Thor’s feet and leaned back against his legs. Thor tried to shift away down the log he was sitting on, but Loki leaned in harder.

“Stay,” he murmured for Thor’s ears only.

They were telling stories that night, laughing and boasting, reminiscing over adventures past. Normally-dour Sif got funny when she drank, and Fandral egged her on until all four of them were crying with laughter. Loki’s head was spinning a bit and he closed his eyes. He felt Thor idly playing with the end of his hair where it was falling against Thor’s knee.

If all he could have was this, for the rest of his life, he thought that maybe he could be happy.

*

“What's going on between the two of you?” Fandral asked Loki, keeping his voice low. Thor was still snoring in his tent and Sif was off bathing by herself, and it was just the two of them tending the fire and getting breakfast going.

“Who, me and Sif?” Loki asked, pretending at innocence.

“You and him,” Fandral said and pointed at Thor's tent with his chin. “I've been thinking on it and nothing has been right since that one time…”

“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about,” Loki said, a trifle too quickly. He stoked the fire with a vicious twist of his fingers and it momentarily blazed to twice its size before settling.

“You don't have to pretend,” Fandral said mildly. “I was there.”

Loki spared a moment to be grateful that it _was_ Fandral who had been there that first time and not one of the others. He was by far Loki’s favorite of Thor's friends. Not sloppy and full of bluster like Volstagg, or completely inscrutable like Hogun, or suspicious and vindictive like Sif. He'd always treated Loki, not exactly with friendship, but with more kindness than most people ever did.

Loki frowned. “You should try asking Thor,” was all he said.

“I did already. All he'll tell me is that it was a bit of your mischief and there's nothing to concern myself with.”

“You should listen to your prince.”

“I just…” Fandral trailed off and looked towards Thor's tent. “I see the way he looks at you when you're not watching.”

Loki’s breath caught in his throat and he kept his face impassive and busied himself feeding sticks into the fire.

“He's not been himself for a long while. And I suspect that neither have you. I just thought you might want to know that whatever it is you don't want to tell me… it's affecting him more than you might think. And since you both seem determined to keep me in ignorance… Well, it's up to you to take care of him.”

Loki finally looked over at Fandral's face. Fandral gave him a smile that was more a tightening of the corners of his mouth than anything else, then rose from his crouch and clapped Loki on the back.

“Think about it,” Fandral said.

“I… yes. Of course,” Loki said, momentarily discomfited.

They were interrupted by Thor stumbling yawning from his tent.

“Do I smell bacon?” Thor asked hopefully.

Loki smiled at him.

“Not yet.”

*

The year passed and Loki settled into his new new normal, which involved cataloguing every touch both accidental and purposeful that passed between him and Thor. Thor had claimed at the height of passion that Loki was ever on his mind, but if it was true he was doing an admirable job of restraining himself. There were hints of it though, the tiniest of actions which Loki’s hyper awareness latched onto. Thor smelling his hair when he thought Loki wouldn’t notice; the fine tremor that he almost completely managed to hide (but not quite) when Loki came up behind him and murmured something in his ear; Thor accidentally catching Loki changing and then disappearing off into the woods for the next half hour. Loki didn’t even mind the last one, because he needed the half hour to take care of his own resulting predicament.

They traveled to four different worlds after Nornheim, stopping off in Asgard for a week or three in between, and rotated through Thor’s friends as companions. Fandral left them for a time in Alfheim, Hogun joined them in Vanaheim, only Sif accompanied them to Delphi IV.

The last time they came back to Asgard before the spring they dropped off their latest bunch of supplies and Loki took the opportunity to get several batches of potions brewing using the ingredients they’d managed to procure. He was pleased to note that Thor’s absence had left Asgard in a relatively typical springtime state. Only the smallest of forest creep had occurred, only a few livestock were twinning. He also took the opportunity to switch the target of his siphon spell once again.

The time of Thor’s need was approaching though. Loki could feel it in Thor’s aura. In that hook in his own chest. In the heated looks that Thor was growing poorer and poorer at controlling.

“Will you go off-world with me?” Thor asked him one morning. “For…” He brushed Loki’s hair behind his ear, and Loki shivered and nodded.

“Midgard,” Loki said. “I can collect some things while we’re there.”

They used Loki’s secret ways. It was a thrill to finally share them with Thor. Loki couldn’t contain his excitement, and he pulled Thor through the crack in space-time with both hands and a big stupid grin on his face. Thor came through with a look of wonder, and his eyes were sparkling when they stepped out into the mountains of northern Midgard.

“Brother!” Thor said, squeezing Loki's hands. “This is marvelous! You’re so clever to have worked it out.”

Loki’s cheeks pinked at the praise, and a warmth spread through his chest.

They collected things all day: plants, rocks, the refraction of sunlight off a glacier, the sigh of the wind over a tarn. Loki was ever aware of Thor next to him, behind him, just round the next corner. Their eyes caught and skittered away time and time again. Their hands trembled when they brushed. Anticipation built up from the pit of Loki’s stomach, pressing against his brain and eyes and teeth from the inside out, hot and squirming. Thor’s voice growled on a loop in Loki’s head.

_I want your pleasure, I want your come, I want to take you apart—_

_I would spill inside you endlessly if I could—_

_All I think about every day is fucking you—_

_Brother, brother, my beautiful brother—_

The sky started out a clear and fathomless blue, but by midday clouds were gathering, and by evening it was a featureless gray mat and a chill cut the air. They set up camp in a small alpine meadow surrounded by pine forest. Two tents. Loki’s belly was a nest of snakes.

Part of him didn’t quite believe that Thor had proposed this. That they were traveling alone, together, and that Thor had _asked_ him this time instead of waiting for desperation to force his hand. He still thought that Thor might lose his nerve. Disappear into his tent and not come out til morning.

While Thor built the fire, Loki ducked into his own tent to remove his armor and take his hair down from the intricate plait he’d had it in all day. And breathe. He was starting to think he might have forgotten how.

Gods, he was half hard already. He needed to get control of himself.

Thor’s gaze darkened when Loki stepped from his tent wrapped in a blanket and with his hair loose and wavy around his shoulders. It was even colder now, the air sharp and pine-scented.

“It’s going to snow,” Thor said, making room next to him.

“Can’t you prevent that?” Loki asked. He sat down next to Thor, a careful handspan away.

Thor shrugged and looked at the sky like he could hear what it was saying. He probably could. “I don’t like to foul up local weather patterns unless I need to.”

“Are you sure this weather isn’t yours to begin with?”

Thor laughed a little ruefully. “I guess not.”

They roasted a brace of rabbits that Thor had trapped earlier in the day and ate them with dried plums and a loaf of rosemary bread they’d brought from home, crusty and with huge crunchy crystals of salt dotting the top. Thor produced a flask of fire whiskey and Loki raised an eyebrow, remembering the time he’d found Thor drunk on his couch.

“Not to get drunk,” Thor said, possibly reading his mind. “Just to get warm.”

It burned on the way down and made Loki cough, and Thor laughed and thumped him on the back, and Loki glared at him in mock annoyance. Thor’s hand lingered on Loki’s back afterwards. He slid it up to work underneath Loki’s hair and knead at his neck, and Loki closed his eyes and tingled all over his body. He was feeling very warm indeed.

“Ok?” Thor whispered and Loki nodded. Thor’s thumb brushed the hinge of Loki’s jaw and made him shiver. “Are you cold?”

“No.” 

Loki looked over and met Thor’s eyes and they both swallowed. The fire crackled.

“I don’t know how to start,” Thor admitted.

“You’re doing alright so far.”

The first fat flakes of snow started drifting from the sky as they walked hand in hand to Loki’s tent. It was a small thing. The ceiling barely cleared Loki’s head when he was sitting flat on the ground and it was fit for two people at the very most—and that only if the other person wasn’t Thor, for he took up at least half as much space again as any ordinary man. Loki had piled it full of blankets and furs until it made a cozy nest and set twinkling witchlights to hover in the corners.

Loki crawled in first and leaned back in his fluffy nest. Thor lifted the flap to follow and let in a few swirling snowflakes. Loki drew him in, trembling.

“You’re shaking,” Thor said, his eyes all concern. 

Loki pulled him up until Thor’s body blanketed his, their faces inches apart.

“I’m fine.”

“Brother, we don’t...I don’t have to…”

“Yes you do,” Loki whispered. “I’m glad you didn’t wait too long this time.” Thor’s hair was tickling his cheek, and he brushed it off and let his fingers wander up to Thor’s cheek, cupped it in his hand. There had been something to say for the raw desperation of years past, but this slow softness was pulling Loki apart in its own quiet way. 

Thor inhaled raggedly.

“I don’t know...what I’m allowed to do,” Thor said. “We’re not...lovers…”

Loki touched Thor’s lips with his fingertips, studied them for a moment. He thought he might tremble out of his skin. “Sometimes we are,” he said finally. “Are we not?”

“Can I kiss you?” Thor said softly. He was leaning on his arms, bracketing Loki’s shoulders, their entire bodies pressed together. What would he have done if Loki said no? Part of Loki wanted to find out, to test out exactly where the line between lust and self-control fell tonight, to see if he had any power here at all.

The rest of him wanted Thor to kiss him, desperately. Didn’t care if he had power. Would cede it all over willingly, anyway, just for a chance at this.

Loki had barely hummed out the beginning of an “mmhm” and started nodding before Thor’s lips were upon his.

Oh, it might be cold outside, but Loki was on fire. He made a noise into Thor’s mouth and found himself putting his arms around Thor’s neck and pulling him closer. Closer. It was all his mind could think of, that one word. Closer. Thor sucked Loki’s lower lip into his mouth and ran his tongue over it and Loki chased Thor’s tongue with his own. Closer. He wrapped his leg around Thor’s and pulled, slid one of his arms down to curl around Thor’s shoulder and grip and tug. Closer. Thor groaned and pushed his hips against Loki’s, licked into his mouth. Closer closer closer.

Thor kissed a line across Loki’s cheek and down to his neck and then buried his face there. He got his arms around Loki, under his back, and Loki still had his around Thor’s shoulders, and they clung tightly.

Loki ached. This was just the spell causing Thor’s lust, he knew that. How unfair to Thor for Loki to have gone and fallen in love with him.

“Help me,” Thor said into Loki’s neck. “Tell me what to do.”

Thor didn’t know what he was allowed to do—Loki didn’t know what he was allowed to ask for—what a fine pair of fools they made.

“Just… Be gentle with me.”

There was no room to undress, so Loki vanished their clothing piece by piece under Thor's hands. He’d tucked the almond oil into the blankets earlier to keep it warm, and he brought it out and pressed it into Thor’s palm, closed Thor’s fingers around it and kissed him softly on the corner of the mouth.

“I’d like to kiss you again,” Thor said.

“You don’t need to keep asking.”

“I feel like I do.”

Loki smiled tremulously, the corners of his mouth unsteady, and marshaled all his courage. “Kiss me, then.”

Thor kissed him meltingly, sweetly, and made a small noise in the back of his throat that floored Loki more thoroughly than any blow Thor had ever dealt him.

“Come on,” Loki urged, breathless. If Thor kept kissing him like this he’d be ruined for the rest of his life, if he wasn’t already. “The oil.”

Loki threw his head back and covered his eyes with his arm as Thor opened him up. He knew that if he had a visual memory of this he would think of nothing else until the end of time. Just the tactile one was going to be bad enough. Thor misinterpreted it, of course, and started apologizing, and wouldn’t stop until Loki pulled him back up and shut him up with another kiss.

“Gods,” Thor said, their foreheads touching, his thick thigh shoved between Loki’s legs. “You’re so good to me. I need...I need…”

“I know,” Loki said. “I’m ready.”

His body was as ready as it would ever be, but Loki wasn’t actually ready, not really. Not for the way their eyes locked as Thor pushed into him, or how their breathing stopped simultaneously, or the tender way that Thor kissed him as he worked himself in. Not for the way their link pulsed with a wave of hopeless love.

They had loved each other their whole lives. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar or surprising. The intensity of it left Loki reeling, though. It was deep, endlessly so, and strong and resonant and uplifting all at once, and left him at the edge of tears.

They moved together for what felt like an age, lost to sensation as Loki was. When Thor spent inside him they both cried out. Gold blazed through them and they were the sky and the snowfall and all the sleeping animals and roots under the ground, and they were themselves, and they were complete.

Loki was still hard afterwards, and Thor was still inside him. Thor reached a hand between them and touched Loki once, questioning. Loki nodded and held onto Thor’s shoulders as Thor brought him to completion. He kissed Thor’s neck as he came and wished that he could have this always.

It took nothing more than a lazy wave of Loki’s hand to clean them up afterwards, and another to dress them. Thor tried to peek out the flap of the tent and found nothing but a swirling wall of white outside.

“I suppose I could clear the blizzard out…” Thor said.

“Just stay here,” Loki said, hardly believing he dared to suggest it. “It will be warmer anyway.”

Thor looked surprised and grateful, and nervous, and he tied the flap closed.

“Are you sure…?”

“Yes.”

Loki cast a bubble of warmth around the tent and snuggled down into the furs. There wasn’t really enough room, not with Thor’s broad shoulders, but Thor snuggled down too, and Loki scooted closer to him until they were practically lying on top of each other.

“See?” Loki said. “Much warmer.”

He drifted off to sleep with Thor’s fingers playing with the ends of his hair and Thor’s voice murmuring something low and unintelligible in his ear and the thought that this may have been the best day of his life.

*

He woke in the morning to Thor’s voice again, and before any of his words could register and before Loki was fully awake, he found himself rolling over into Thor’s embrace with a sleepy smile and a mumbled good morning.

“Oh,” Loki said, realizing what he was doing. Acting like a lover. His cheeks grew warm. Thor's arms tightened around him, though. 

“Brother,” Thor murmured, his eyes serious. “I’m sorry, I—” Loki was suddenly aware of Thor’s erection trapped between them.

“I think that instead of waiting too long, I may not have waited long enough,” Thor continued. “I think...it’s not entirely discharged yet, I think I need to...again…”

He looked so upset. Before, Loki would have been hurt by that. He would have accused Thor of finding Loki distasteful. But, just as Thor was learning to listen to Loki a little better, Loki had been trying to do the same for him, and now he realized that Thor was probably actually upset on Loki's behalf.

“Hush,” Loki said, his wits returning. “It’s still better this way, don’t fret.”

His body was still pliant and welcoming from the night before, and it wasn’t long until Thor was seated inside him. They lay on their sides with Thor spooned up behind him, one broad hand on Loki’s chest and the other arm up over their heads. Loki found himself reaching back to dig his fingers into the meat of Thor’s ass, urging him to go faster, and Thor’s name spilling from his lips in breathless sighs. And Thor sucked a bruise onto his neck, and slid his hand down to stroke Loki’s cock in time with his thrusts, and they came together, glowing and transported.

“I love you,” Thor said afterwards, their bodies still stuck together with sweat and spend, and Loki wondered how much it had cost him to say that, here.

 _Not as much as I love you._ “I know,” Loki said instead.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is as far as I got in the story on the first go-around, so if you've read it before this will be the last bit of old material
> 
> I have two new chapters after this already written though! I'll start posting them once they've been edited properly <3


	7. Year Four

The tenderness of their night together seemed to have cast some kind of spell upon them. Both of them were loath to return to the company of others, and they stayed in the mountains of Midgard for many days alone together. 

Thor was unable to keep his hands to himself where Loki's hair was concerned, and finally one morning Loki seated himself between Thor's legs after breakfast and thrust a comb at him.

“Braid it for me.”

Thor's hands on his scalp made him tingle from his crown to his toes. He fought the urge to wiggle like a puppy or sigh like a lovesick youth. It became a morning routine. Wake, eat, wash, hair. Thor's plaits grew more and more intricate and time consuming and Loki would amuse them by casting illusions to play out in front of them while Thor worked. Sometimes Thor would pause in his combing and braiding for minutes on end simply to watch, his fingers buried in Loki’s hair or resting on his shoulders. It was Loki's favorite part of the day.

After a little more than a week, they decided to go back to Asgard just long enough to drop off what they'd collected and move Loki’s siphon spell, and then continue on exploring Loki's secret ways. Just the two of them.

Loki took them home and they spent half a day just putting away everything they’d collected over the last year.

Loki was thrilled at the prospect of traveling alone with Thor. Thor was always easier to tempt into mischief when his friends weren’t around to temper him, and he and Loki hadn’t adventured properly alone since they were boys on the edge of manhood. And this was new for both of them, these secret ways, something for them to explore together, to share, hidden from everyone else.

“Where shall we go first?” Thor said. He had draped himself across Loki’s couch in a lazy sprawl, legs spread, head tilted so that it exposed the gentle slope of his neck. It was a position that positively invited Loki to come seat himself in his lap. Did he know how he looked? Loki was tempted to do it and then bite him, just to make him stop.

“There’s a path down in one of the coves I haven’t tried yet,” Loki said. “Let’s go see what kind of trouble we can get into.”

Loki had catalogued perhaps twenty cracks that led into and out of Asgard. There were thousands more than that though, a score more at each world he’d visited, all leading to different worlds themselves, some within the Nine Realms and others dozens of galaxies away. Every time Loki had found a new one he set it down in a notebook that he kept tucked away in his pocket dimension, though in truth the map of spiderwebbing faults was growing so complicated that he’d soon need something more robust. 

The crack at the cove ended up dumping them out in an alley in the bustling spaceport metropolis of Praxon Omega. They ducked behind a tumble of debris and garbage to peer out onto the colorful riot of the main drag.

“Oh, this is going to be _fun_ ,” Loki said.

“I haven’t been here since…” Thor paused.

“Since father embargoed them two centuries ago?”

“Norns. If we get caught here—”

Loki grinned. He hadn’t yet showed Thor his new trick of changing his form. He took a step back and spread his arms wide and let the change wash over him, turning himself into a passably handsome Zehoberei, green-skinned and three inches shorter than his usual height, and watched in satisfaction as Thor’s eyes widened in equal parts delight and worry.

“Then let’s not get caught,” Loki said.

*

They spent a month there, carousing their way around the city with borrowed faces. On the second day there, Loki tried to swindle one of the casinos and instead got so thoroughly swindled himself that Thor laughed himself sick every time he thought about it. A few days later, Thor found a bar that served spirits so strong that even his godly liver couldn’t handle it, and he ended up with a hangover that left him attached to the toilet for three days while Loki flitted about the city making friends and enemies.

“Can’t you just heal me?” Thor moaned the third night that Loki got in from going out without him.

“This is entirely self-inflicted.”

Thor gave him a wretched, pitiful look, the kind that made common people fall all over themselves to help him.

“The things I do for you,” Loki sighed, and called on his seidr.

They took in live spectacles—fire-eaters, acrobats, plays, traveling bestiaries. They ate foods they’d never eaten before. They visited shops with all the wonders of the universe on display. Thor even bought some of them, though Loki suspected it was probably mostly to offset the things that found their way into Loki’s dimensional pocket unpaid. Thor managed to accidentally insult a Kronan once and got roped into fighting the poor fellow in a gladiator-style ring, where he made such a good showing for himself that he stuck around for the next week fighting people for fun and profit. Loki, of course, hung around in the resulting crowd and slyly convinced everyone who would give him an ear to bet against Thor and then raked in the resulting cash.

When Thor grew tired of the sport, he took his earnings and donated them to a relief organization dedicated to serving the city’s orphans. Loki kept his. Thor’s actions made him feel bad about it, but not bad enough to go about flinging money at people.

It was good fun. The only way it could be better was if Thor acted on the looks he gave Loki when he thought Loki wasn’t looking. Fandral had told Loki about those. Loki hadn’t forgotten. He tried to tease them out. Pretended to not pay attention while actually hanging onto every microexpression that flickered across his brother’s face.

Sometimes the looks Thor gave Loki were hungry enough to make him break out into a sweat in an air-conditioned room, to make his heart race and his mouth go dry. Sometimes they were anguished enough to break Loki’s heart. Sometimes they were so tender that it was all that Loki could do not to simply go to him, kiss him, offer himself up for the taking right then and there.

Ymir’s blood, they’d fucked only a month or two ago, how was he supposed to hold out until the next time?

When they’d had enough of Praxon Omega’s excess, Loki pulled them through another crack, this time to deposit them in the middle of a vast featureless plain. They soon started growing dizzy from the world’s atmosphere, and Loki guided them to another crack quickly. They found themselves on a white sand beach at sunset, warm and beautiful, and both of them took deep gasping breaths of the salty, breathable air, staggering to brace themselves on their thighs.

“Romantic,” Loki said drily, and heaved in another shuddering breath.

Thor gave him one of those inscrutable looks. Loki had been joking, but suddenly it didn’t feel very funny.

This world turned out to be gorgeous but remote, no sign of any intelligent creatures other than themselves, and though the beach was lovely, Loki couldn’t take the proximity to Thor without anything else to take his mind off it. Within a day he was pulling them through another crack, and then another and another.

They passed three seasons thusly, hopping from one world to the next, getting into trouble where there was trouble to be got into, moving on where there wasn’t. Loki got hold of a nice chunk of vibranium the size of his palm and imbued it with seidr to make a three-dimensional map of all the cracks he’d catalogued. When he held the metal in his hand and activated it, the map sparkled to life in the air above it, a foot tall and two wide, and easily manipulated by either his mind or his fingers. It was the only one of its kind in the universe, he was sure of it, and it was quickly becoming his pride and joy. He added to it every time they traveled.

The two of them drank and laughed and cheated and fought their way through villages and cities both primitive and advanced. They danced around each other delicately all the while, at the knife’s edge of something, although what Loki wasn’t quite sure. He knew that Thor wanted to fuck him, and that Thor knew that Loki knew. And that this was the first time they were spending time alone together with that knowledge, and no companions to act as a buffer to… To what? Of course Thor wouldn’t act on it until he had to. He was _Thor_. And of course Loki wouldn’t ask him to. How could he? There was no excuse. So why, then, did they dance?

The dance was in the looks, of course, but also the way they spoke, the things they said and the things they left conspicuously unsaid. The almost-touches. The favors they did for each other. The way they would inch closer to each other over the span of days until the air between them grew charged, and, suddenly overwhelmed, they would retreat to their separate corners.

And despite that, Loki was having a marvelous time. Even before he’d had the bad luck to go and fall in love with his brother, getting into mischief with Thor had been his favorite thing to do, and it still was.

They went back to Asgard for the midwinter ball. They knew their mother missed them, and Loki had to change the siphon location besides. It was supposed to be a short detour, nothing more.

They arrived in the afternoon, and were almost immediately separated by well-meaning people who all wanted or needed ten minutes of their attention after so long away. By the time Loki managed to get himself free, he had no idea where Thor had gotten off to, and he bathed and dressed alone before going down to the grand hall for the festivities.

After their travels across the expansive universe, the ball, which usually felt huge and bright, seemed small and shabby.

Loki had only to follow the flow of the crowd with his eyes to spot Thor, who was in the middle of a group of onlookers chatting animatedly. He wondered if Thor ever noticed how he affected the social fabric of any room he was in. Even the people who would never dare to talk to him were lured in by his gravity. 

Loki spotted Heimdall across the room as well, and broke out in a cold sweat. Heimdall had been Asgard’s all-seeing guardian since well before Loki was born, and he had grown up under that eerie golden gaze, grown used to ignoring it, discounting it. Heimdall wasn’t omniscient after all; he only Saw what he was looking for, and as far as Loki knew he wasn’t in the habit of spying on the royal family. And he never spoke of the things he Saw, unless they posed a direct security threat to the Realm Eternal. Most of the time Loki managed to put the Watcher from his mind. 

But Heimdall might _know_.

About his and Thor’s unorthodox arrangement, of course, but also about Loki’s secret ways, which somehow made him more jittery. Those ways were his. He wondered if he should start trying to find a way to shield himself from Heimdall’s Sight. He ought to be able to, now that his powers were stronger.

Loki was wearing the cloak that his mother had made for him, and he pulled it tighter around his shoulders, and went to get Thor.

Thor was boasting to Fandral about one of the fighters he’d bested on Praxon Omega, demonstrating one of the moves with enough expansiveness that it made Fandral’s companion spill her drink and shoot Thor a dirty look that he didn’t see.

“Excuse me,” Loki said smoothly, inserting himself and earning a smile from Thor that set his belly fluttering. “A moment with my brother, please.”

He got Thor to follow him out onto the balcony where they had some semblance of privacy.

“We shouldn’t linger,” Loki said in low tones. “Every time you stay on Asgard, your energies start to accumulate here. I can move the siphon spell tonight and we can be gone by daybreak.”

Thor rubbed at his beard and didn’t immediately agree.

“What?” Loki said.

“Couldn’t we stay a week?” Thor said. “Surely Asgard can take a week of me.”

“A week, then,” Loki said. “But no more.”

Thor’s gaze dropped to Loki’s mouth and Loki found himself licking his lips, holding his breath. Thor raised his hand and for a moment Loki thought he meant to clasp Loki’s neck, but instead he rubbed at his beard again, and turned away, sighing. 

Why it felt like a rejection, Loki didn’t know.

Loki turned his gaze to where Thor was looking, out across the snowy gardens, everything cast in silver from the light of the waxing half moon. The stars glittered coldly. Below the balcony rail, the snow held a row of perfect, tiny bird footprints.

“It’s a lovely night,” Loki said.

“It is,” Thor agreed, though when Loki thought about it later he realized that Thor had been looking at him when he said it and not out at the gardens at all.

*

It ended up being more than a week. They’d been gone for a long time and there were things that needed doing. Duties they’d been shirking. People who wanted to see them.

It started the day after the ball with Odin sternly reminding them of their posts on the council and that he expected them both to show themselves that afternoon, which they did, though Thor kept dozing off and Loki had to kick him awake more than once. 

Frigga snagged them for dinner afterwards, and told them that Vanaheim had sent two of their own young princes to Asgard, to stay from the midwinter ball until the summer solstice for training in statecraft, sorcery, and combat. Thor and Loki had done the same in their own youth, spending seasons in Vanaheim and Alfheim, out on farflung Nidavellir. Now they were expected to return the favor and act as part-time mentors.

“You don’t have to see the Vanir princes every day,” Frigga said, “or even every week. But you do need to see them.”

And then there was the correspondence that had piled up in their absence, some of which had to be responded to. And Thor’s friends begging them to come out drinking, or training. And Mjolnir needed a new strap, and Loki needed new boots and a new breastplate too, and Hilda at the library was being promoted from apprentice and wanted Loki to attend the ceremony—and then somehow they’d been on Asgard for weeks and it was most of the way to spring, and even though Loki saw Thor nearly every day he missed him fiercely.

The private little bubble that had been carrying them around the universe in the wake of the night they’d spent making love on Midgard was well and truly burst. And that’s what it had been—it hadn’t been fucking, it had been _making love_. Every time Loki’s mind turned to it he tore himself away; dwelling on it only made him despondent.

Besides, it had been nearly a year. They’d need to do it again soon. Loki shouldn’t get his hopes up that it would be anything near the same as it was last time. 

The first flowers of spring came too early, of course.

Loki got Thor alone for a moment after a council meeting, the two of them staying behind as the room emptied out.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Thor said before Loki could open his mouth. “I need to leave.”

“Aye,” Loki said. “I fear the disruption to the crops will be too great if we stay.”

He didn’t like that Thor said “I” instead of “we,” but he tried to ignore it. 

“We could continue on as before,” Loki suggested. “I’ve recently detected another crack. Or we could hop over to Alfheim and try the one I found by the waterfall there—”

Thor was staring at Loki’s shoulder, and unthinkingly Loki put his hand there. Ah. He’d braided his hair into a long tail this morning and pulled it over his left shoulder to hang down his chest. He hadn’t cut his hair at all since Thor had initially made it grow, and now when it was loose it hung down past his shoulder blades. He found himself smoothing the hair at his crown nervously. The memory of Thor braiding it for him every day at their campsite on Midgard left him a bit tight in the chest.

He should really cut it.

To his surprise, Thor took his hand, pulling it gently away from his hair and squeezing his fingers. Loki’s eyes snapped to Thor’s. Thor was giving him one of those inscrutable looks that he sometimes did.

“It’s almost time,” Thor said seriously. “If you come with me…”

Loki took his hand back. “I have to come with you. I thought you’d got over this foolish squeamishness by now.”

Thor folded his arms across his chest and looked away. His voice was quiet. “I’m not sure squeamishness is what I’d call it.”

Loki’s stomach had turned to lead. His whole body felt heavy, unmoveable. Why couldn’t he just fold himself into Thor’s arms, kiss him, touch him, comfort him and be comforted himself? Why had the Fates doomed him to fall in love with the only person that he wasn’t allowed? The following days were going to be an agony of waiting; the event itself so much and yet not enough.

“I’ll be waiting at the stables at dawn,” Loki said, his tone clipped. “Join me or don’t. I’m leaving either way.” He pushed past Thor to leave, and found himself pausing at the door to look back. Thor was still looking away with his arms crossed, lost in thought. Loki hit the doorframe with his fist, and left.

*

Thor was actually at the stables before Loki arrived. They saddled up without speaking and rode out into the freezing mist. When they got to their destination, Loki touched each horse’s nose and murmured a spell— _go home, it’s that way_.

The pathway that Loki pulled them through brought them out at the top of a hill, and they could see a small village tucked into the valley below them. It was warmer here than Asgard, the trees in full leaf. Summer, wherever this was.

“Shall we?” Thor asked, the first words he’d spoken that morning.

The people of the village were friendly enough, and Loki and Thor found themselves welcomed cordially if not enthusiastically.

“Could we buy some food from you?” Thor asked of a woman at a stall in the town square, jingling his purse.

“Begging your pardon, but there’s no food to buy,” she said apologetically.

Upon further questioning it turned out that a blight had taken most of their crops two years ago, and then last year the harvest had been ruined by a drought that was still on-going. Loki looked around while the woman was talking and studied the townspeople a little more closely. Most of them were far too thin, and had a haunted look in their eyes.

“Show me your fields,” Thor said.

Loki watched as Thor walked their land, calling to the earth, raising shoots from the ground with every step; watched as he spoke to the sky afterwards and brought the rain. Several crops he brought to full ripening out of season. The sad flocks of chickens all began laying, and the goats whose udders had run dry found them full to bursting with milk.

The townsfolk wept with gratitude, and showered Thor, and to a lesser extent Loki, in praise and celebration. They spent that night in the town’s only common house, sharing in the bounty and the high spirits, Thor accepting the people’s near-worship with an easy grace that Loki had always been envious of. Thor’s eyes seemed distant though, and Loki knew he had something on his mind. Loki found it disquieting. The feeling he’d had since they returned to Asgard, that Thor was slipping away, reared up and suffocated him. Despite the awkwardness that had been dogging them since yesterday, he found himself sidling closer and closer to Thor as the night wore on. Telling tales and jokes to try and make the room and, by extension, Thor, laugh. Trying to pull Thor back from wherever he had gone.

They shared the only guest room in the village, a tiny thing above the tavern’s common room with wooden walls and clean linens. Loki took the bed and Thor took the floor. Loki was nearly asleep when Thor started talking.

“I’ve been selfish,” Thor said, his voice drifting out from the darkness. “I have these powers and all I’ve been doing is avoiding them. I think...I should try to use them. For good. These are not the only people in need.”

“Could we start in the morning at least?” Loki said, yawning. “I’m tired.”

“I think maybe…” Thor trailed off. “I think maybe I should go alone.”

Loki was suddenly very awake. “What? Why?”

“Not because I don’t want you with me,” Thor said. “But because I do.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You distract me,” Thor said. “In a good way...a very fine...way.”

“Haven’t we been having a good time?” Loki said, trying to keep his voice neutral. 

“It’s been so good that I haven’t been thinking of anyone other than us,” Thor said quietly. “And I think maybe I ought to.”

“What if I just changed the target of the siphon spell? Sent it wherever you wanted it to go.”

“It’s not enough. I can do more.” 

Loki blinked back tears in the darkness.

“For how long?” Loki said when he thought he could control his voice again.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

And there it was. Their time together had been running through Loki’s hands like grains of sand and he had been too busy marveling at the feel of it to realize that the hourglass was emptying. He wanted to get up and leave. His throat was too dry and tight to swallow and he heard his breathing audibly hitch.

“I need to do this,” Thor said. Pleaded, really. 

“Of course you do,” Loki whispered. Of course he did. Thor was good. Kind-hearted. Selfish perhaps in small matters, but selfless when anything larger than himself was at stake. It was why Mjolnir answered to him and why Loki loved him so dearly. The only surprise here was that Loki had managed to distract Thor from this obvious mission for as long as he had.

“Just fuck me now and get it over with,” Loki said. “Then I can leave you to it.”

“Loki, that’s not—”

Loki’s anger flared. “Didn’t you see how everyone that came within five feet of you tonight had to adjust their smallclothes? You’re glowing like a bonfire. It’s time. Just be done with it and then you can be on your way.”

“Brother, my intention was not—I don’t want—”

“Fuck me now or don’t do it at all.”

He heard Thor get up out of his nest of blankets on the floor, and then he was sitting on the bed by Loki’s knees, making the mattress dip. Loki rolled away from him. He felt cheap and not a little worthless.

“You’re angry,” Thor said. 

Loki scoffed. “On the contrary, I’m delighted. To be kept around until you have use of me, and then discarded. It’s a marvelous feeling.” 

Thor put his hand on Loki’s leg, squeezed it. “That’s not how it is. You always see things in the worst possible way, brother. The misery that we saw here today—I’m ashamed that I never thought of this use for my powers before. Surely you can see how this is something I must do. I cherish the time we’ve spent together, but you have to admit, when we’re left to our own devices we cause trouble rather than fix it. And…”

“And?”

Thor sighed a little ruefully. “I don’t want you to get sick of me. You seemed happy, back at home. I thought you might welcome some time spent away from me after so long in my company. I know my presence must be...taxing. I tax myself, if truth be told.” Then, as an afterthought, “Most days I can hardly stand myself.”

Thor’s hand on Loki’s leg was warm even through the blanket. His sincerity made most of Loki’s anger drain away to resignation, though a hard little knot of hurt remained.

“I’m never happy,” Loki said.

“Fuck,” Thor breathed.

Loki sniffled, and Thor squeezed his leg again, too tight. Their link flared to life. A wave of wistful longing reverberated between them, painful and sweet, and Loki rolled over to face Thor in the dark. 

“You should do it,” Loki said. “It is a good thing. A heroic thing. And in truth...I’d get bored. You know I would.”

Thor cupped his neck.

“Thank you. Do you still want me to—right now—”

Loki sighed. Did he want Thor to fuck him. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

Thor huffed out a self-deprecating little breath. “Of course not.”

He started to withdraw his hand and stand, but Loki seized his arm and held him back.

“The floor is hard,” Loki said. “The bed is big enough for both of us.”

*

Loki didn’t sleep well. He knew that he would leave tomorrow, even if Thor didn’t. He kept waking, when Thor rolled over or shifted the blanket or snored, but each time he got to settle himself up against Thor’s side; if Thor had questioned him on it he would have pretended to be asleep. A few times he thought Thor might be awake, but Thor never moved away from him.

In the morning he woke to the feeling of Thor brushing his hair back from his temple. He kept his eyes closed, tried to keep his breathing even. Thor’s fingers skimmed down his cheek and then tucked his hair behind his ear and then, so lightly that Loki wasn’t sure if he imagined it, there was the smallest brush of something against his brow. Thor’s lips. A kiss softer than a breath. Loki thought he might float away.

And then Thor rose, and went to the washroom.

When Thor came out, bare-chested and beautiful, Loki was sitting on the edge of the bed. He’d put on a dressing gown and finger combed his curls as best he could and fanned his hair over his shoulders. He thought perhaps his hair was one thing Thor liked simply as Thor, and not as a fertility god whose powers had run amok. If this was to be their last day together for some time, Loki wanted to leave a good memory of himself.

Thor looked at him and Loki looked at him looking. Thor seemed so big in the tiny room. His presence was that of three ordinary men. Loki turned his witchsight on him, and found him radiating molten gold, his fertility magic wrapped thoroughly around every inch of him like vines. There was so much of it. It reached out to Loki, seeking, and its touch was warm and comforting. Like the welcoming earth, ready to provide a home, to take him in and nourish him. It was too much for one person to bear though. Like the vines it resembled, it was squeezing the life out of Thor, a little more every minute. 

Loki realized that Thor had come to him and was sitting on his heels between Loki’s legs holding his hands.

“What do you see?” Thor said. “Am I… Should we…?”

Loki shook off the eerily doubled sight of Thor and his magic until he was looking only at Thor.

“Do you want to?” Loki asked.

Thor’s look turned hungry. “You should not ask me that. You know the answer.”

Once they did this, Thor would leave him. Loki hated him. He hated himself.

“Do you want to kiss me?” Loki heard himself say.

Thor took Loki’s wrists and pressed his lips to them, then to his palms, then his knuckles, and Loki held his breath, his belly fluttering, his hands gone shaky. Thor put Loki’s hand on his neck in a mirror of the gesture he so often did to Loki. Slowly, he rose up to his knees so that their faces were level and touched Loki’s hair, letting the ends slip through his fingers.

“Have you always been this beautiful?” Thor murmured.

“Don’t.”

Thor closed his eyes and let Loki’s hand drop from his neck. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. “I should be better at this by now.”

“Thor,” Loki said, and made him look up. “I asked you if you wanted to kiss me.”

Thor looked at his mouth and Loki felt his own lips part.

“I’m right here,” Loki said.

It had been a year since Loki had last felt Thor’s lips on his. It was just as sweet as he’d remembered. Thor kissed him like he was trying to commit him to memory, and Loki did the same, because he was. He needed this to get him through the year to come. No one else had ever kissed him the way that Thor kissed him. He should never have let Thor start doing it. 

Thor pulled back and kissed Loki’s cheek, then his temple, and then they simply held each other for a moment, Thor still kneeling between Loki’s knees.

“Every day I have to fight with myself not to...to bed you,” Thor said. “I feel half a beast most of the time. I don’t know how you stand my presence, brother.”

Loki thought of the almost unbearable push and pull of the last year and stroked his brother’s hair, wordless.

Thor continued. “You needn’t be so sweet with me when it comes to this, and yet you are, and it shames me.”

“You’d do the same for me,” Loki said.

“Last time…” Thor said, so quiet Loki almost didn’t hear it. “Last time you said that we were lovers, sometimes.”

“What we do—” Loki started, then paused to carefully choose his words. “What we do, we do because we must. But that doesn’t mean we need to make it as miserable as possible. We’re allowed to find whatever comfort in it that we can.”

It was as close as Loki had ever gotten to admitting the pleasure that he took from their couplings, and his heart beat too quickly. Was he giving too much of himself away? Thor kissed his neck and Loki held his breath wondering if Thor could feel his pulse against his lips. 

“Comfort,” Thor murmured.

“Aye.”

Thor rose to his feet and tugged Loki up with him. He pushed Loki’s hair off his shoulders to hang down his back, then untied the sash of his dressing gown and let it fall open. Loki was wearing only his sleep shorts underneath. Thor bracketed Loki’s ribcage with his huge hands, his thumbs stroking Loki’s nipples until they pebbled and gooseflesh rose all over his torso.

It made Loki’s breath hitch. If he could, if it were permitted, he’d do the same to Thor. He’d touch every inch of his brother’s body, lay claim to all of it with his hands, with his lips. He’d go to his knees in gratitude for it. Give his mouth in supplication. What would Thor’s cock feel like on his tongue?

He found that his mouth had fallen open. One of Thor’s hands slid down to Loki’s waist and the other came up to palm at his jaw. Loki turned into the touch. Thor thumbed at Loki’s lower lip, and Loki inhaled, and then Thor’s thumb was in his mouth and Thor’s mouth was on his cheek and Loki was clutching at Thor’s shoulders to hold himself up.

Loki could feel Thor’s magic now even without trying. It pulsed off of him in waves, each one sending a spike of arousal through him so strong that he nearly moaned. Thor hooked his thumb over Loki’s teeth and dragged him into another kiss, deep and hungry.

“Comfort,” Thor said again, low and gravelly, and before Loki could do anything more than nod dumbly Thor was dropping to his knees and taking Loki’s shorts down with him, and his mouth was on Loki’s cock, hot and wet.

Thor had done this before, but only ever to bring Loki release once he’d spent. He’d never lingered. He lingered now, all lips and tongue and hands, eager and messy, and Loki couldn’t help but bury his hands in Thor’s hair and groan, breathless with the shock and pleasure of it.

Thor pulled off and stood, but it was only to push the dressing gown off Loki’s shoulders to fall to the floor, to push him back onto the bed and blanket him with his body and leave a trail of wet kisses from his neck to his navel before taking Loki into his mouth again.

And then Thor got hold of his thigh and pushed it up, and laid a kiss to the place between Loki’s cheeks, and Loki gasped.

“Thor,” Loki said, strangled.

“Let me, please,” Thor said. “You’re so good to me, let me make it good for you. Please.”

If Loki were stronger, he wouldn’t let Thor do this. Once the spell was reversed it would be an unforgivable trespass—both taking advantage of Thor’s compulsion and revealing too much of his own monstrous feelings in the process.

Loki wasn’t strong though, he was weak and always had been, especially where his brother was concerned, and in answer he spread his legs wider and nodded, unable to speak.

Thor held Loki’s thighs apart and set his tongue to work.

Loki lost track of time while Thor was down there between his legs. The world narrowed to the sensation of Thor’s mouth and hands on his cock, his hole, working at him, working into him, so good that Loki's toes curled, that he pushed himself into Thor's face, urging him on. Thor wouldn't be rushed, though. It was almost meditative, the unhurried way he took Loki apart. And come apart Loki did, all the chattering pieces of him falling away one by one as he rode the highs and lows of Thor’s patient assault, until he was hollowed out speck of himself, nothing left but desire, his body oversensitive and trembling and on the edge of falling into something vast.

It wasn’t until Thor’s hands covered his that Loki realized he had put both hands over his own mouth to stifle the noises he was making. His fingers were bitten and red. He sobbed, once, and then Thor was gathering him up, pushing into him with his cock, slow and deliberate, pushing Loki’s heart up into his throat, fitting himself into the space he had made.

“I love you,” Thor said, “I love you, I love you.” It sounded like an apology. Like a question.

Loki wasn’t quite in his body. He felt untethered from it and yet a slave to its sensations at the same time. He couldn’t speak, only clutch Thor tighter to him. Thor withdrew almost completely and slid back home in a single long thrust that made Loki moan. And then he did it again, and again, each thrust punching a sound out of Loki, until they were rocking together hard and fast and Thor was moaning too, and leaning down to cover Loki’s face in kisses, to take his earlobe in his mouth and suck as his hips snapped and Loki arched underneath him. Thor lifted his head and eyes were glowing, two pools of luminescence.

Thor’s orgasm rolled through Loki just as his own was crashing over him.

Their link flared and all was weightless, that drawn-out, timeless moment of freefall at the crest of a wave. And then Thor’s magic was discharging through them and they were falling, onto, into, through each other, a wild tumble where it wasn’t clear where one of them ended and the other one began, a pleasure so ecstatic that all else paled in comparison.

Loki didn’t know how long it took them to finally come back to themselves. When Thor finally rolled off of him, Loki turned on his side away from him and looked around the room and was unsurprised at the sight; the tree outside the window had grown so rapidly that it had broken through the window, and the branch that stuck into the room was covered in blooming flowers and bright-feathered little birds. The planks of the wooden walls and floor had all twigged, and light green buds curled tightly at the tips, trembling with the potential to burst free.

Behind him, Thor was stroking his hair.

“Don’t tell me it grew again,” Loki said.

“No. Loki, I—”

“Don’t say anything.”

Loki closed his eyes and tried to breathe. It would have been kinder for Thor to dash his head in with Mjolnir than do what he had just done. Loki was ruined. Utterly ruined. What had just happened had been the most wonderful thing he’d ever experienced in his life.

And it was the spell’s compulsion. It wasn’t real. 

“I’ll take you home,” Loki continued, keeping his voice carefully level. “Then Heimdall can send you wherever you want.”

One of the birds flew over and landed on the back of Loki’s hand. It cocked its head at him and let him stroke its tiny beak with a gentle fingertip before it flew away again.

Thor touched Loki’s shoulder and Loki turned to face him. Thor looked as devastated as Loki felt.

“It’s fine, Thor,” Loki said. “It’s fine. Just—” His voice cracked. “Before you go—can I have a hug from my brother?”

Thor nearly fell on him in his haste to comply.


	8. Year Five: Part One

Loki brought Thor back to Asgard as he said he would, and stayed long enough to collect a few of his possessions—his mother’s cloak and the heartstone necklace, among other things—then used his ways to go back to Praxon Omega, where he got drunk and stayed that way for weeks.

He changed his form to a woman for the first time in years. As a man drinking alone in public he was generally left alone, but as a woman he attracted every kind of attention, and in his current mood he welcomed it. He wanted to lash out, and the leering advances gave him an excuse to bite back, to unleash his tongue and his fists and occasionally his knives.

It was an unworthy pursuit and he knew it.

In one of his fleeting sober moments he wondered what Thor would think of this. Thor had fought here too, though he had done it in a ring for sport. When Thor fought, there was no deception involved. Loki was nothing but deception; his very shape was a lie, and every word that crossed his lips was dishonest; his victims, though they never knew it, were being punished for his crime and not theirs.

Thor would hate this. Thor would make him stop.

But Thor wasn’t here.

This particular spiral came to an end one night when a Kree with missing teeth made a grab for Loki in his woman form and instead managed to snag the heartstone necklace and snap the cord. Loki broke both of the Kree’s arms and snatched his necklace back with trembling hands, then turned around and walked out of the bar, tab unpaid. He wandered the streets until the alcohol left his head and the sun rose, the heartstone clutched so tightly in his fist that when he finally opened it the imprint of it was stark red against his palm.

He brought the smooth stone to his lips. Strange that such a tiny little thing had upended his whole life. He searched vainly for any trace of Thor left on it—a scent, an energetic resonance—but all he felt was the banked fire within it and the hollowness of his own heart.

His self-destruction spent, he went home.

*

~~_Dearest Thor,_ ~~

~~_Dear Thor,_ ~~

~~_Brother—_ ~~

Loki crumpled the parchment and incinerated it with a thought, got up and walked a lap around his study, then sat back down. The devil’s ivy on the windowsill mocked him cheerfully. He began writing again, this time with no salutation at all:

_The mountains are lovely at midsummer. You shouldn’t miss them. Don’t let me down—_

_~L_

He blew on the ink to dry it and thought of the mountain cave that he and Thor had visited, the first place he’d made a target of the siphon spell. There must be a score of lush caves dotting the mountains now with how often he’d had to move it. It would need to be done again.

He brought the letter to Heimdall. He didn’t ask where Thor was, didn’t want to know, just asked the Watcher to send it along.

*

The Vanir children wouldn’t leave Loki alone.

Frigga had called them princes, but that was generous in Loki’s estimation. They were Frey’s distant nephews, not his sons. Their names were Arvid and Brant, and they were reedy little things, in that awkward stage of adolescence where limbs and body and intellect and emotions were all at odds with one another. They looked at Loki with worshipful eyes that made him both preen and want to hide. What that often meant was that Loki would indulge their tag-along behavior and his own tendency to show off up until the moment he’d abruptly had enough and then sent them away out of nowhere.

One of the boys, Brant, was a warrior. He favored an axe, and had a chip on his shoulder that Loki recognized well; Thor had been much the same as a young man, particularly when he’d first started wielding Mjolnir. Loki took it upon himself to demonstrate to Brant how even an axe’s power and reach could be defenseless against an opponent with quick reflexes and ranged weapons who made good use of terrain.

The problem with visiting the training grounds, however, was the high likelihood of running into Fandral, who had been trying to corner Loki ever since he got back, and who Loki was keen to avoid. He didn’t want to have a discussion about Thor. He didn’t want to have a discussion about himself. 

The other Vanir brother, Arvid, showed an interest and talent for potion brewing. Showing the boy the basics made Loki itch to brew something more complicated. 

Loki’s workroom was as well-stocked as it had ever been, mostly thanks to Thor’s efforts. Locked up by himself with his wards set to exclude even Thor (especially Thor), Loki set about replenishing his supply of basic potions—catalysts and adjuvants, minor healing and sleeping draughts, vials of stimulant to sharpen the senses, and so forth. It proved to be a welcome distraction. It was easier to avoid Fandral this way, and potion brewing required a singularity of purpose that didn’t leave much room for idle daydreaming.

Daydreaming, of course, meant thinking about Thor. About that last morning together, the melting kisses, the way Loki had come apart in his brother’s hands…

Every time Loki realized he was on that train of thought he shut it down.

Loki rode quite a bit, as well. It had always been one of his preferred methods of stress control—the power of a galloping horse underneath him, responsive to his slightest touch—the way the rest of the world fell away in an undulating blur—his mind free to soar—it was almost like peace.

Sometimes, Loki would ride out by himself and practice hiding from Heimdall’s Sight. The thought of Heimdall watching him had been nagging at him ever since Midwinter and he couldn’t shake the resulting desire to conceal himself. Why should anyone have the ability to spy on him no matter where he was? So he’d gotten Hilda to dig up a few promising texts for him—including one that she gave him on the sly, as she’d called in a favor from a fellow librarian from Xandar to get something not entirely legal—and then he’d cobbled together something rudimentary, and he used the solo trips to finetune his spell. 

It all did an adequate job of keeping him from dwelling on things that only made him melancholy, and so it was that Midsummer took him unawares.

The day before it, frazzled from three straight days with no sleep (he’d been babysitting a potion that required very exacting calibrations every hour), Loki stumbled into the bathing chamber to find Thor already there, standing under one of the wall spigots rinsing his hair.

Loki took a step backward in surprise, his heart leaping into his throat, and suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious—he hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes in three days, and he was rumpled, bag-eyed, and greasy, and probably stank.

“Brother,” Loki squeaked.

The smile that broke across Thor’s face was wide and sunny.

Later that evening, Loki let Thor into his chambers despite his initial gut reaction to make himself scarce. Thor’s appearance had dredged up the feelings he’d been avoiding and also reminded him uncomfortably about the time he’d spent wallowing on Praxon Omega, but above all else Loki simply missed him and wanted to spend time with him.

Thor came with wine and gifts, as he had done before, and they drank, and slowly Loki found himself unwinding, his shoulders relaxing. Thor was happy to see him. Thor had missed him. Thor wasn’t avoiding him. And Thor told him of the good he’d been doing, and, of all things, Loki found himself feeling proud. This was a glimpse of the man who would be King one day.

For once, the thought didn’t even hurt.

*

The palace held a public Midsummer bonfire every year that was actually several bonfires, massive things set up around the largest lake in the gardens. It was always a merry time. They provided several whole oxen that had been roasting in pits for days, and the ale and mead flowed as freely as the good humor.

Loki wore his hair braided back from his face for the occasion, but otherwise left it free to tumble down past his shoulder blades. Over his black tunic and leggings he wore a long green vest trimmed in gold that nearly brushed his boot tops, and he wove himself a illusory crown of lilies of every shade. He rouged his lips.

He met his brother in the hallway outside their apartments to go to the gardens together. The broad hungry sweep of Thor’s gaze over his body didn’t go unnoticed, nor did the way it lingered on his lips, and Loki resisted the urge to touch them.

“That outfit looks well on you,” Thor said as they walked.

Thor looked good too, in a sleeveless leather breastplate that showed off his arms to their best advantage, and blue and red ribbons twisted into his hair. He smelled of vanilla, almond, and cardamom and it was still enough to make Loki’s knees feel unsteady even after all these years.

“You look...adequate,” Loki said and was graced with one of Thor’s amused smiles.

Loki cast another illusion with the barest flick of his finger, a belt of golden sunflowers circling Thor’s waist, and waited for him to notice it. When he did, he laughed delightedly and told Loki to leave it.

Loki spent the entire walk through the palace fantasizing about leaving red lip prints on Thor’s neck and chest, a trail of them down to his perfect cock. Imagined his own face afterwards, smeared crimson, debauched. Sucking Thor’s cock was something Loki had been thinking about from the very beginning, before he even knew his own heart, and his desire to do it was only growing stronger.

Loki lost himself in thought, daydreaming of fabricating some story about the spell, _Brother, I’m so sorry, I messed up the siphon last time I moved it, I’m afraid we need to...yes...maybe we should find out if my mouth...we’ve never tried it, it might work…_ , and was only shaken from it by Thor touching his arm.

“We’re here.”

The unlit pyres towered over the heads of the crowd, already hundreds strong, though the number would likely grow as dusk approached. The pyres were made of dried sticks and vines woven around wooden frames in the shape of enormous beasts, bilgesnipes and wyrms and pegasi. Thor fetched them some orange blossom mead and spicy roasted meat on sticks.

The Warriors Three basically held court at this event, and had for decades. There was always a lively drunken group around wherever they’d chosen to ensconce themselves and regale their onlookers with tales of their adventures. It also made them easy to avoid, which was a bonus as far as Loki was concerned. He spotted them before Thor did, and deftly managed to divert Thor’s attention to a group of musicians in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, that put them in the path of Arvid and Brant.

Once they saw Loki they homed in on him like lasers and attached themselves as securely as two little burrs. Their hero worship of Loki had faded with their growing familiarity, but Thor was with him, and Thor was still a giant in their eyes. They chattered nonstop, their open admiration so guileless that it was nearly endearing. Thor bore it with good humor. Loki was less patient though, and he was glad when he managed to foist them off on Agnar the steward. 

Late afternoon stretched into evening. Loki and Thor dragged each other around, taking in the music and dancing, nibbling on cakes and fresh roasted nuts. Thor somehow got hold of a melon and cracked the thing in two with his bare hands. He offered half to Loki, and though it looked delicious Loki didn’t want to ruin the rouge on his lips, and he declined. Besides the orange blossom mead, Loki drank Alfish white wine with frost riming the glass, and fire cider spiced with cinnamon and dragon’s breath, and ale brewed with purple sweet potatoes from the mountains, and it was all delicious and sweet and went to his head in the most delightful way. 

At some point a lute and tambor started up a court jig, and Thor convinced Loki to dance, mostly by manhandling him into the starting steps until Loki, laughing, batted his hands away and succumbed. A small space cleared out around the two of them as they flew through the steps of the dance, whirling and clapping. Loki couldn’t tear his gaze away from Thor’s, or stop smiling. The dance ended with a blind spin where, if properly timed, the dancers’ faces would end up an inch from each other, and if improperly timed would end with someone getting a bloody nose. Theirs ended with the tips of their noses brushing, so close that every time they heaved in a breath their chests touched.

When they stepped apart to the applause of the crowd, Loki saw Thor wipe the smallest smudge of red from his lip, and his belly fluttered.

“The fires!” someone shouted.

“It’s time for the fires!”

The setting sun was halfway past the horizon, the sky a canvas of bright pink and orange giving way to muted purples and dusky blue.

“Come with me,” Thor murmured, and nodded his head away from the pyres.

Loki followed, and before he could even ask where they were going, Thor was holding out his hand to call Mjolnir from wherever he’d left it, and then his arm was around Loki’s waist, and they were lifting off the ground.

Loki clung to his brother’s side as they sailed up into the air. They didn’t go far, just up to the top of the nearest spire, a slender ornamental thing a few stories tall and with a convenient lip to sit on, where they could look down at the festivities from above.

“Best view in the house,” Thor said, smiling.

Here above the trees, the sky opened over their heads. As the last sliver of sun disappeared, the bonfires roared to life with a crackling intensity that Loki could feel even from where they were. A cheer went up below them.

Thor relaxed back against the stone of the spire, his heels hanging over the edge. Loki knew he shouldn’t, but it had been such a lovely day, and the alcohol made him daring, and instead of simply sitting next to Thor he jammed himself right up against his side, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder.

They simply watched for a little while, content.

“I’ll be gone on the morrow,” Thor finally said. “I’m taking the little Vanir princes back to Vanaheim. I might stay there for a bit. There’s a bit of a border conflict brewing there. It doesn’t sound serious, mostly farmers with pitchforks, but it has to do with arguments over arable land. I might be able to help. Maybe make some non-arable land arable, you know?”

“Your specialty,” Loki said. “We’ll have to move the siphon target tonight, then.”

“Aye,” Thor said. His hand shifted on his own leg, and brushed against Loki’s thigh, and Loki only barely stopped himself from taking it in his own.

“Make sure to be back by Midwinter,” Loki continued. “I’ll need to move it once more, before…”

“Aye.”

Loki became aware that Thor wasn’t looking down at the fires, but at him. At where their legs touched, where the back of Thor’s hand still lay against him. 

Suddenly self-conscious, he moved away.

*

Sometime between Midsummer and Midwinter, Loki realized that he needed to start brewing the potions for reversing Thor’s excess fertility magic. There was only a year and a half until the alignment he’d chosen. The potions he needed weren’t as rare and complex as the ones he’d used to do the thing in the first place, which as far as comforts went was a rather cold one. A year and a half. That was all the time he had left in this wonderful, awful, not-relationship that had grown between them.

Thor sent a letter once in autumn. He told Loki cheerfully about how he’d pretended to leave Vanaheim and then snuck back in disguise to make all the disputed land fertile, and how Loki would have been proud of his cleverness. Loki was aghast. When Thor didn’t have Loki’s magic around to help him he was hopeless at subterfuge, and all Loki could imagine was the Crown Prince of Asgard sneaking around a muddy field wearing a silly hat and thinking no one recognized him. _Show me this disguise when you get home,_ Loki said. _I need a good laugh._

Arvid and Brant wrote to him several times as well, eager to keep up correspondence. Their letters were mostly filled with adolescent chatter and Vanir gossip, although there were some actual academic questions they threw Loki’s way on occasion. 

Once, Brant mentioned the border issues, and Loki wrote him back with a scolding tone. The information Brant had let slip was perilously close to state secret, and Loki didn’t want to invite Vanaheim’s wrath, or have Vanaheim’s wrath come down on the lad’s head for having loose lips.

 _ **Don’t** write me about this again,_ Loki scratched angrily onto the parchment. _For your sake as well as mine._

Brant’s letter left Loki uneasy. Thor had seemed sure that he’d solved whatever the issue was, but clearly something bigger was afoot. But that was Vanaheim’s issue, not Asgard’s, and so Loki put it from his mind.

Midwinter came, and Thor did not.

When Thor didn’t show up in time for the ball, Loki’s feelings were hurt, though he knew they didn’t have any right to be. It wasn’t the first time Thor had missed it. If Loki had planned an outfit specifically designed to draw Thor’s attention and keep it, that was his own disappointment and shame to bear in secret. He went to the ball alone. His tongue was acid that night, and he left a trail of offended courtiers, nobles, and officials that he knew he’d have to placate in the days to come, but which knowledge didn’t stop him from venting his frustration on them in the moment.

He thought longingly of the back alleys Praxon Omega, where he could provoke people into hitting him instead of merely insulting him back. He couldn’t go off-world though, not when Thor would be back any day.

A week after Midwinter, some of the cut evergreen boughs that had been brought into the palace started trying to root into the wall.

Loki cursed Thor’s tardiness.

He turned himself into a magpie and flew to the latest target of the siphon, another cave much like the first. He flew right in, banked around in a wide arc, and somersaulted in the air, landing lightly on his own two feet.

“Ohh,” he breathed.

Every inch of the cave was covered in something alive—moss, flowers, vines—and without meaning to, Loki sank down to his knees. He hadn’t been this overwhelmed by Thor’s magic in quite some time. The very air vibrated with his brother’s essence, and it felt like he was breathing in molecules of Thor with every breath, incorporating them into himself. He realized he was flushed. He put his cool hand on his face for relief, and just that small movement of his body was enough to shift his breeches against his cock, which swelled to life with a swiftness that left him groaning.

He’d only come here to check, to see if he could shift some of the energies without Thor’s presence, but he felt helpless under the weight of the desire wrapping around him, and he didn’t even try to resist.

Loki opened his breeches and took himself in his hand. It felt so good, being here in this place of Thor’s making, giving into this, touching himself, where no one would see and no one would know, not even Thor—maybe he could even let himself—oh, he shouldn’t do this—

Loki closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Thor was standing before him.

“Hello, brother,” Thor said. “I’ve missed you.”

A hot madness had seized Loki and pushed him past shame. He made the double of his brother come settle next to him, far enough away to preserve the illusion that he could touch if he wanted to. This was the most self-indulgent thing he had ever done. He should stop.

“Does that feel good?” Thor said, his voice low and husky.

Loki couldn’t bring himself to actually answer, but this Thor knew everything that he wanted to hear. He stroked himself harshly, his grip stuttering from lack of oil, and he hissed, his pleasure edged in pain.

“Conjure yourself some oil,” Thor said. He had to make Thor give him permission not to hurt himself, wasn’t that incredible? “Get yourself wet for me. Just like that. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Look at you. I wish I could touch you myself. You’d come so sweetly for me, brother.”

Loki made a noise deep in his throat. Everything was slick and hot now, and with Thor’s magic thrumming around him his release was building fast and recklessly high, a gathering charge that was already almost unbearable.

“I think of nothing but you,” Thor said. “Being apart is agony. I need you by my side. Gods, Loki. Once we’re together again I’ll never let you go. My dearest love. Come for me.”

Hearing those words in Thor’s voice was too much. Loki spent on a long wretched moan, so intensely that it hurt, falling forward over his knees to bury his face in the moss while his body jerked and spasmed. What a pathetic creature he was. 

He lay there for long minutes pulling himself back together. How easy it would be to just lie here and let the moss grow over him like an embrace.

But instead he finally vanished his mess, and tucked himself away, and rose, and set about trying to do what he’d come there to do in the first place. He couldn’t move the siphon target from here without Thor’s presence, but he could funnel a little of what was already here away, and so he did. As Thor’s energy flowed out of the cave, the feeling of his presence lessened, and it became easier to think, and Loki grew more mortified at what he’d done every second. He wondered for a moment if he could wipe his own mind of it.

He’d honestly conjured himself up a Thor and then made it say things like _that_. It was enough to make Loki angry at the real Thor for driving him to such lunacy.

Let Thor not come back til the spring. It would be a blessing not to see him again until then.

*

Security council meetings started taking up much of Loki’s time. The troubles on Vanaheim had only grown. The two minor lords who had been squabbling had decided to unite with each other in opposition to the throne instead, and had hired off-world mercenaries. Frey was begging Asgard for aid. Odin was delaying, hesitant to commit Asgard to a war that wasn’t theirs.

Winter’s hold lessened, and the snows started melting, and Loki began counting the days until Thor would return. It would be any time now. The hook in Loki’s chest was a constant pressure, like it was gathering up the loose threads of himself and pulling them taut. Whenever his mind wandered he found himself unconsciously moving in the direction of the pull. He roundly chastised himself each time.

Was Thor honestly expecting Loki to come chasing after him yet again? Was one fist fight not enough for him? 

Loki was already jittery and on-edge when Odin summoned him one morning for a private meeting in his study.

“We need Thor to return home,” Odin said bluntly. “Both of you will be needed in the coming months. Take whoever you need with you and have Heimdall send you to retrieve him.”

Loki could only grit his teeth and comply. “Yes, Father.”

He left the meeting angry, stalking down the hallway with long ground-eating strides, his coat tails swirling. _Retrieve him_. Norns. Odin had said to bring people, but Loki would go alone and sort his brother out himself. Shake him until this...this… _betrayal_ made sense. Because that’s how Loki was feeling, betrayed, that after how close they’d been that Thor would stay away and stay away and _stay away_. Every tender gesture Loki had ever allowed himself to make replayed in his mind, and he rejected all of them.

He stopped briefly at his quarters to retrieve a few items, and then made for the stables. Why wait?

As the stableboy was saddling his horse, Fandral appeared. Of course he would finally manage to corner Loki now, of all times.

“Loki—” Fandral began.

“Leave me,” Loki said shortly, not looking at him. “I have business to attend to.”

“You’re going to find Thor, aren’t you?”

“My business is none of your concern.”

“Loki, please.”

Fandral put himself squarely in front of Loki, hands up in supplication, demanding his attention, and Loki finally met his eyes with a hard look.

“Something’s wrong,” Fandral said. “Thor has sent no word for months. Take me with you. Let me help.”

The stableboy handed Loki the reins, and Loki swung up onto the saddle.

“I need no help.”

Loki wheeled the horse around and set his heels to its sides. He flew down the Bifrost, his eyes watering from the wind generated by the horse’s speed, and when he reached the Observatory he leaped from the saddle. The palace horses were accustomed to these trips and it would find its way back to the stables with no help from him.

“Heimdall!” Loki called. “Where is my brother!”

The Watcher said nothing in greeting, simply turned away and turned his eerie golden eyes out upon the cosmos.

“He is in Nornheim,” Heimdall said after a moment. “Shall I send both of you?”

“Both of—”

Loki whirled, cursing. Fandral had followed him.

“Yes, send both of us,” Fandral said. He gave Loki the same hard look that Loki had given him in the stables.

“Very well.” Heimdall began moving towards the dais.

“Wait,” Loki said. Something was wrong. It nagged at him for a moment, and then he realized. “Did you say Nornheim? That can’t be right.”

“I Saw him there just a moment ago.”

“But—” Loki cut himself off. _But the hook in my chest does not pull towards Nornheim._ “Wait.”

Loki turned away from both of them and closed his eyes. He relaxed his shoulders and let himself lean into the pull of their link. It was a sweet sharp pain, like pushing on a loose tooth. It didn’t point towards Nornheim, that was certain. But where…

Loki realized he was swaying. He opened his eyes.

“Vanaheim. Look to Vanaheim.”

Heimdall’s gaze unfocused. “I See fighting. I do not See Thor.”

“Look harder.”

A long minute passed, Heimdall’s brow furrowing more every second. “I do not See Thor, but… There are spots where I See nothing at all.” His gaze refocused and he looked at Loki seriously. “My prince, this is unprecedented.”

 _Maybe not entirely unprecedented_ , Loki thought, thinking of his own experiments with hiding from Heimdall’s Sight. Maybe others had worked out the same thing he had. But who… why…?

His stomach sank. Thor hadn’t been avoiding him at all.

“Someone has captured Thor,” Loki said. “Heimdall, alert the palace. Fandral—”

Fandral looked over at him, wide-eyed.

Loki tightened his jaw. “We’re going to Vanaheim.”

*


End file.
